398 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science. 
spring was always heiled with delight and their going in the fall was always 
regarded as portending the coming of snow and sleet and storm. 
Like the robin, a few bluebirds might remain quite late in the fall in 
seasonable years, sometimes even throughout the winter. 
Every field on a typical Indiana farm in those days had scores of stumps 
on every acre. Many of these stumps were hollow. The hole was usually 
only a few inches in diameter and 10 to 30 inches deep. These holes were 
apparently regarded by the bluebirds as ideal nesting sites, if we judge 
from the frequency with which they were occupied for that purpose. 
There was an 18-acre field which was, for several years following that 
in which it was cleared for cultivation, remarkably well supplied with 
stumps. The author of these notes has very good reason for remembering 
these stumps, as he had to dig around every one of them; and how often 
have his ribs been bruised and his sides made to ache by blows from the 
plow handles as the plow struck the roots which were far-reaching and 
ever in the way! He was admonished to plow close and to dig the dirt 
up loose because the “best corn grows closest to the stump’! This, how- 
ever, did not prevent the work from being about the hardest the small boy 
could find on the farm. But there was one compensating pleasure,—the 
finding of a bluebird’s nest now and then in these hollow stumps. Just 
how many were found memory does not now safely fix, but it must have 
been more than a score in this one field every year. Usually a second brood 
would be reared, a new stump being frequently selected for the second nest. 
Next to hollow stumps, deserted woodpecker holes in dead trees were 
oftenest used. Sometimes the hole would be in a stump, sometimes in a 
stake or post of the fence. Bird boxes put up about the house were sure to 
be used, especially before the advent of the pestiferous English sparrow. 
We have found bluebirds’ nests in holes in elm, oaks of several species, 
maple, poplar, cottonwceod, beech, walnut, buckeye. ash, wild cherry, hick- 
ory, sycamore, butternut, willow, apple, pear. and doubtless in others; also 
fence stakes. posts and rails, and in various bird houses put up about the 
habitations of man. 
Definite records for Carroll County are as follows: 
February 20, 1878, seen; October 25. noted at Camden. February 6-8, 
1879, three or four seen; 25th, common about Camden; March 5, saw 40 to 
50 males: 6th, saw two or three females, first of season. May 22, 1883, 
Vern Beck found a nest with six eggs. February 12, 1884, first of the season 
seen and heard: 22d, noted as common since 13th; March 7, noted; April 
10, seen building ; 25th, Matthew Sterling took a set of eggs near Camden; 
May 5. took a set of five fresh white eggs from a box we had put up in our 
yard in Camden; 18th, another set of five. also pure white, from same birds, 
but in another box which we had provided; June 3, a third set of five, also 
white, in the first box and by the same pair of birds. March 7, 1885, first of 
season: 10th and 11th, quite common: April 22. five fresh eggs in box in our 
garden in Camden; first nest of the season. June 25-July 1, 1905, several 
pairs seen on the old home farm. Ava Evermann noted the Bluebird at 
Burlington March 24, 1907. when one was seen. and again on October 28, 
when one was observed in an open woods, and on March 3, 1920, at Kokomo 
where she had not noted any since Thanksgiving of 1919. 
