THE MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD. as 
we have only two records of its occurrence on the Pacific slope in Washing- 
ton’. ‘The bird ranges up to the highest peaks of the central divide, but it is 
not at all common in the mountains. It seems to prefer more open situations 
and, so far from being exclusively boreal in its tastes, has been found nesting 
at as low an altitude as Wallula, on the banks of the Columbia River. 
At Chelan in a typical season (1896) the migrations opened with the ap- 
pearance, on the 24th day of February, of seven males of most perfect beauty. 
They deployed upon the townsite in search of insects, and uttered plaintive 
notes of Sialian quality, varied by dainty, thrush-like tsooks of alarm when too 
closely pressed. They did not at any time attempt song, and the entire song 
tradition, including the “delightful warble” of Townsend, appears to be quite 
without foundation, as in the case of S. m. occidentalis. On the 15th of March 
a flock of fifty Bluebirds, all males, were sighted flying in close order over the 
mountain-side, a vision of loveliness which was enhanced by the presence of a 
dozen or more Westerns. Several flocks were observed at this season in which 
the two species mingled freely. On the 27th of the same month the last 
great wave of migration was noted, and some two hundred birds, all ““Arctics”’ 
now, and at least a third of them females, quartered themselves upon us for a 
day,——with what delighted appreciation upon our part may best be imagined. 
The males are practically all azure; but the females have a much more modest 
garb of reddish gray, or stone-olive, which flashes into blue on wings and tail, 
only as the bird flits from post to post. 
In nesting, Mountain Bluebirds sometimes display the same confidence 
shown by the darker species; and their adoption into urban, or at least village 
life, would seem to be only a matter of time. They are a gentle breed, and it 
is an honor of which we may well strive to prove worthy, to be chosen as 
hosts by these distinguished gentle folk. 
“Gentle,” as applied to Bluebirds, has always the older sense of noble,— 
noble because brave. My attention was first called to a nest in the timbered 
foothills of Yakima County, because its valiant owner furiously beset a Flicker 
of twice his size, a clumsy villain who had lighted by mistake on the Bluebird’s 
nesting stub. The gallant defender did not use these tactics on the bird-man, 
but his accents were sternly accusing as the man proceeded to investigate a 
clean-cut hole eight feet up in a pine stub four feet thru. Five dainty eggs 
of the palest possible blue rested at the bottom of the cavity on a soft cushion 
of fine grasses. 
This must have been a typical structure, but near Chelan I found the birds 
nesting at the end of a tunnel driven into a perpendicular bank much fre- 
a. First record by R. H. Lawrence: Two seen on Stevens Prairie [Gray’s Harbor County] April 22 
[1891] (Vide Auk, Vol. IX., Jan. 1892, p. 47). Second record by the author: Male and female with 
five full-grown young encountered near Sluiskin Falls on Mt. Rainier, July 7, 1908, at an altitude of 
6500 feet. 
