38 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 



morning, but cannot find their pretty author. He denies 

 your eyes the welcome sight of him, until at last you give 

 up the search only to discover him close behind you. This 

 unintended ventriloquism may be in his favor, but his azure 

 plumage is very conspicuous as he stands on a tall fence- 

 rider with the woods for a background, or reconnoitres the 

 entrance to an old woodpecker's hole in some white cotton- 

 wood, 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 emulat- 

 ing the lofty journeys of the pointed-winged birds, and is 

 rarely seen sixty feet above the surface. He loiters about 

 the outskirts of the woods, flitting from stump to stump; 

 delights in a tract of newly-cleared land ; and looks no far- 

 ther 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 attraction 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. 

 Together they go house-hunting. It is not long, usually, be- 



