BLUEBIRD. 
I have not altered the song in the slightest way in mak- 
ing this adaptation; the fit was a mere ‘‘ happen so.” 
But the vocabulary of the Robin is extensive; he might 
or he might not have sung the above lines to his mate, 
what J heard him sing was what I had learned from a 
book! How impossible it is to be a disinterested inter- 
preter of bird music! 
Sluebird This is one of the earliest birds to arrive 
Sialia sialis in the spring; it is a question which we 
LL. 7.00 inches i i 
Marchioth  2re likely to meet first, the Bluebird or the 
Robin, but not infrequently a flash of the 
cerulean color tells us the Bluebird has won in the race 
northward. His personal appearance is tasteful if not 
gesthetic. Upper parts including wings and tail ultra- 
marine blue; there is a rusty tinge to the feather-tips in 
the fall; under parts a light burnt sienna or chestnut 
tone; feathers beneath the tail white. Female much 
paler in color; the upper parts gray-blue. Nest gener- 
ally in the hollow of some old orchard tree, or often in 
the convenient ‘‘bird house”; it is lined with fize 
grasses. Egg a blue-white. This bird is common in the 
eastern United States as far west as the eastern slopes of 
the Rocky Mountains; its northern range-limit is Mani- 
toba and Nova Scotia; it breeds throughout its range, 
and winters from southern New York to the Gulf States. 
Before the snow has melted, and while the air is still 
piercing chill and the cold gray clouds chase each other 
across a forbidding sky, the key-note of the spring sym« 
phony is struck by a little Bluebird who is perched 
somewhere among the bare, brown branches of the old 
maple beside the road, or the apple-tree in the orchard. 
The tones are unmistakable, quavering, tentative, un- 
certain, a bit tender and sentimental, and far more ap- | 
pealing than the robust ones of the Robin; here they are: 
Jwice, Bva. 
Purity. 
313 
