A MAY MOVING 
O bluebird, up in the maple-tree 
Shaking your throat with such bursts of glee ; 
Did you dip your wings in the azure dye 
When April began to paint the sky ? 
Or were you hatched from a blue-bell bright 
>Neath the warm gold breast of a sunbeam light ? 
EMILY DICKINSON. 
ALKING one day through an orchard 
with an inquisitive friend, her eager, 
investigating fingers pried off a strip of bark 
and disclosed five exquisite blue eggs on a 
bed of feathers in the hollow limb of an 
apple-tree. The door of this dainty home 
was a foot higher up the branch, —a small 
round hole made by a downy woodpecker. 
The little bluebird mother, distressed at the 
undesired exposure of her domestic arrange- 
ments, after much talking it over with her 
spouse, decided to abandon the eggs and 
make a new home elsewhere. At first a 
clump of willows in a swampy place was 
29 
