BLUEBIRDS 



643 



human traffic in the greatest abundance, and they use such 

 ways to a great extent as lines of migration. 



As a summer resident the Bluebird may be called locally 

 common, absent from some extensive tracts of territory, found 

 in general, however, all over the State as a nesting bird in the 

 vicinity of civilization and less commonly along the natural 

 waterways remote from civilization. In the deep, thick ever- 

 green woods they do not occur as summer residents. As they 

 migrate in fall their mournful warbled "tur-ree, tur-ee" calls 

 attention to the fact that they are going, while in spring they 

 more frequently utter a warbled and less sad sounding call 

 sounding to me like "cherry, cherry, cheer-up." These calls 

 are uttered on the wing or when they have alighted, the spring 

 call being more often given when perched, while the fall migra- 

 tion call is used when on the wing in fall, and to a less degree 

 as a flight call in spring. 



During the nesting season they are distinctly inclined to 

 sociability, nesting in bird houses where the English Sparrows 

 have not been introduced to drive them away and interfere 

 with them, and also nesting in holes in apple and other 

 orchard trees, crevices in barns and outbuildings, holes in 

 stump and rail fences, and in general in almost any suitable 

 natural or artificial cavity, either about buildings or holes in 

 stubs along natural highways and about lakes, preferring the 

 settled districts. Nest building sometimes begins very early, as 

 I have found full sets of eggs as early as April twenty-fourth, 

 while I have found young in nests as early as May eighth, but 

 more generally full complements of eggs may be expected in 

 early May. Four to seven, more often five eggs are laid. 



Nest building is participated in by both parents, and I have 

 known of a nest containing the full complement of eggs just 

 seven days after the birds began building, indicating that the 

 nest was completed in three days and an egg laid daily there- 

 after. The parents take turn in incubating and the eggs hatch 

 in twelve days, the young leaving in fifteen days after they are 



