Bluebird Migrations — 1917 17 



following seems to have been a secondary climax in the mi- 

 grations. Three observers reported them on this date. It 

 had now become beautiful weather again, water was every- 

 where and Winter seemed really to have lost his hold. A 

 flock of one hundred-fifty bluebirds was seen by Mrs. Ella 

 Webster at her home on the river bank, and Mr. Harold 

 Newton saw a flock of one hundred individuals on the same 

 day. After this the new order was introduced; for the 

 robins, meadowlarks and red-wings came, then W^inter had 

 surely gone and Spring had arrived. 



There is a beautiful prophetic spirit in the appearance 

 of the bluebird so very early, before man has even dared to 

 dream ihat Spring is at hand. Each year we welcome this 

 bird with more grateful hearts than on the year pre- 

 ceding. 



There is one other note which I wish to include in this 

 article, not because it belongs in a bluebird account, but 

 because it seems to be linked in its inexplainable peculiar- 

 ity with this early bluebird migration. 



On March sixteenth of this same year, 1917, Miss Har- 

 riet Clark reported a rose-breasted grosbeak. This is the 

 earliest record for the grosbeak which Floyd county has 

 ever had. The bird was seen again by the same observer 

 on the eighteenth. For some five or more years a pair of 

 these birds had a nest in an apjjle tree in Miss Clark's 

 yard. Each year the family had been watched with the 

 greatest interest. It was near this same location that this 

 early arrival was discovered in 1917. Just what happened 

 to the bird when the blizzard came on of course we do not 

 know but the fact that the nest in the apple tree was not 

 completed that year leads one to the belief that a tragedy, 

 which only Winter could be held accountable for, was the 

 result of the sweet singer's early arrival. 



Within a week from the time that the notice first ap- 

 peared in the daily press, asking for bird notes, fifty-three 

 reports reached the bureau. These were given by thirty- 

 six different observers, of which not more than a dozen 



