THE BLUEBIRD. 3* 



16. THE BLUEBIRD. 



SIALIA SIAIJS Haldeman. 



Our familiar sky-blue friend is to be met with over all eastern 

 North America., north to Lake Superior, and west to Colorado. 

 His natural nesting-place is some cranny in a dead tree. 

 He is therefore found loitering about the outskirts of the 

 woods, and he delights in a tract of burned forest. In such 

 scenes he and his mate go house-hunting long before njost other 

 small birds have thought of conjugal responsibilities, — in the 

 first sunny days of March. She assumes the direction, and it 

 usually is not long before they are suited, for the woodpeckers 

 have been there years before them, chiselling out holes now left 

 vacant ; or the snapping oft' of some old limb has opened the 

 way to a snug cavity. Any kind of a cranny seems to serve in 

 a pinch. 1 have known bluebirds to build in a broken tin water- 

 spout under the eaves, between the blind and sash of a little- 

 used window, in a deep fork between the limbs of an apple- 

 tree, or to steal the neat mud house of the eave swallow ; and 

 they eagerly settle in boxes and gourds hung up in the garden, 

 whenever they are not driven away by pugnacious wrens or 

 English sparrows. Sometimes objection is made, and frequent 

 combats are recorded between the bluebirds and such sparrows, 

 martins, wrens and even woodpeckers, as deem themselves 

 to have been injured by the former, — who are not always as 

 gentle in the breeding season as they might be, — or are 

 themselves the attacking parties. Contraiy to what I should ex- 

 pect, it appears that the bluebird is usually victorious, even 

 whipping such professional fighters as the English sparrows, 

 and birds as strong as the small woodpeckers. The house wren 

 is his most inveterate and successful enemy. This tiny bucca- 

 neer will often take forcible possession of the bluebird's snug 

 house, rake out all the materials and keep it himself; but 

 sometimes the owner defends himself most successfully. Mr. 

 Gentry relates that a pair of great-crested flycatchers had taken 

 possession of an empty tomato-can placed on top of a post, 

 constructed their nest and laid their eggs. At this crisis a pair 

 of bluebirds came upon the scene and, coveting the cosy 



