THE BLUEBIRD 



By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



TOe i^ational ^association ot audufaon Societies 



EDUCATIONAL LEAFLET NO. 24 



Who dares write of the Bluebird, thinking to add a fresher tint to his 

 plumage, a new tone to his melodious voice, or a word of praise to his 

 gentle life, that is as much a part of our human heritage and blended with 

 our memories as any other attribute of home? 



Not I, surely, for I know him too well and each year feel myself more 



spellbound and mute by the memories he awakens. Yet I would repeat his 



brief biography, lest there be any who, being absorbed by living inward, 



have not yet looked outward and upward to this poet of the sky and earth 



and the fullness and goodness thereof. 



For the Bluebird was the first of all poets, — even before man 

 The Bluebird's , j li j -i • l -i i u • r i_ • 



_ had blazed a trail in the wilderness or set up the sign ot his 



habitation and tamed his thoughts to wear harness and travel 

 to measure. And so he came to inherit the earth before man, and this, our 

 country, is all The Bluebird's Country, for at some time of the year he 

 roves about it from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Mexico to Nova 

 Scotia, though westward, after he passes the range of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, he wears a different dress and bears other longer names. 



In spite of the fact that our eastern Bluebird is a home-body, 

 The Bluebird's .... . , , 



_ . loving his nesting haunt and returning to it year after year, 



he is an adventurous traveler. Ranging all over the eastern 



United States at some time in the season, this bird has its nesting haunts 



at the very edge of the Gulf States and upward, as far north as Manitoba 



and Nova Scotia. 



When the breeding season is over, the birds travel sometimes in family 



groups and sometimes in large flocks, moving southward little by little, 



according to season and food-supply, some journeying as far as Mexico, 



others lingering through the middle and southern states. The Bluebirds 



that live in our orchards in summer are very unlikely to be those that we 



see in the same place in winter days. Next to the breeding impulse, the 



migrating instinct seems to be the strongest factor in bird life. When the 



life of the home is over, Nature whispers, " To wing, up and on ! " So a few 



of the Bluebirds who have nested in Massachusetts may be those who linger 



in New Jersey, while those whose breeding haunts were in Nova Scotia 



drift downward to fill their places in Massachusetts. But the great mass of 



even those birds we call winter residents go to the more southern parts of 



(48) 



