WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



and many bluebirds are killed by the small hawks. 

 Thoreau said that he carried the sky on his back, 

 to which John Burroughs added, " and the earth 

 on his breast." This describes him perfectly. 



The bluebird is not ambitious in his flight, never 

 emulating the lofty journeys of the pointed-winged 

 birds, and is rarely seen sixty feet above the sur- 

 face. He loiters about the outskirts of the woods, 

 flitting from stump to stump; delights in a tract 

 of newly cleared land ; and looks no further when 

 he discovers, not far from the farm-house, a group 

 of charred and towering trunks — monuments of 

 a long-passed fire in the forest. Next to that he 

 loves an aged orchard. In both places the attrac- 

 tion is mainly the grubs, worms, and insects that 

 infest dead and decaying woods, and upon which 

 he feeds. To such a spot he leads his mate, easily 

 to be distinguished by her duller plumage. To- 

 gether they go house-hunting. It is not long, usu- 

 ally, before they are suited; for the woodpeckers 

 have been there years before them, chiselling out 

 many holes for themselves which are now left va- 

 cant; or the snapping off of some old limb has 

 opened the way to a snug cavity in its hollow in- 

 terior. Any kind of a cranny seems to serve in a 

 pinch. I have known them to build in a broken 



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