Bluebird Tenants 



By MARIAN K. HUBBARD. Wellesley Colleee 



T' 



iHK l^lucbirds nested just outside 

 the dining-room window on the 

 third floor of a suburban apart- 

 ment house. This building is in the town 

 of Wellesley and surrounded by other 

 houses, but on one side it stands close to 

 the eastern slope of a long, low ridge 

 that forms one of the natural boundaries 

 of the college grounds. Oak-woods, 

 sprinkled with pine, crown the hill and 

 extend one -third of the way down over 

 the eastern side. Birds of many feathers 

 frequent this wooded slope. In the 

 springtime Warblers glean about its 

 edges, the Great - crested Flycatcher 

 whistles, buoyant, as he flies from tree 

 to tree, and notes of the Wood Thrush 

 rise through the stillness of late afternoon 

 like bubbles from the bottom of a spring. 

 The window to which the Bluebirds 

 came is the west one of a southwest bay, 

 and looks straight out and up to the 

 wooded hill. A house stands opposite, a 

 little higher on the slope, surrounded by 

 an apple orchard, some trees of which 

 stray down to the yard immediately 

 beneath. 



From this window, for two winters past, birds have been fed with suet 

 and nuts. The success of the winter boarding establishment bred the idea 

 of summer boarders, and at the end of the first winter there was set out 

 upon a shelf a substantial and attractive dwelling made out of an apple-tree 

 bough, — the gift of an ingenious and nature-loving friend. The tenement 

 had no occupants during the first season, but last spring a pair of Bluebirds, 

 desperate over their fortunes in a cat-infested neighborhood, took the lease. 

 On April 25 there was grass inside the house, with telltale wisps pro- 

 truding from the entrance. Both birds came openly to the shelf that day, 

 and both worked busily for three days more. Later, four blue eggs were 

 laid, and while the female brooded these, the male, on the tip-top twig of a 

 neighboring tree or on a telephone wire some forty feet away, defended 

 valiantly his domain. 



Anticipating the exhausting work of the following weeks, a supply of 



III) 



THE BLUEBIRDS' WINDOW 

 Photographed by I,. E. I.ockwood 



