INDIGO BLUEBIRD 



on worms and weeds. He was an invaluable member of our 

 family for his music and his industry, while he endeared himself to 

 all of us by his tender and unceasing attentions to his mate. He 

 helped more than any bird I ever have watched in nest building, 

 while from the first he always entered the nest to brood when the 

 hen went after her morning food and exercise. As she left the 

 bush she uttered a sharp call that sounded like : " Sir, sir ! " He in- 

 stantly responded and hurrying to the bush entered the nest 

 and remained until she returned. 



From the first day, I began making friends with them, grad- 

 ually introducing a tripod, then a camera, then myself, into their 

 immediate surroundings. When they had brooded a week I 

 secured a charming study of the male bird while the light was full 

 in the east and he at his daily stunt of brooding. In years of 

 field work I think this is the only study I have of a brooding male 

 bird. I have many of a male on the edge of a nest, feeding the 

 female or young, but only this one of a male really settled in a 

 nest, with the patient, absorbed look of the nesting female on his 

 face. Mentioning his face recalls that it was dark on his cheeks 

 close around the beak, while there was a tiny speck of a foreign 

 growth in the inside corner of one eye, where he probably had 

 flown against a thorn in a former nesting, for he was a bird of too 

 much experience not to have nested before; also, as a rule, all the 

 Indigo bird nests I have seen are in thorny bushes like hawthorn 

 or crab, where it is a wonder that more of the birds do not injure 

 themselves. 



After developing this plate I decided to try for one more, in 

 the hope that the bird in brooding the following morning would 

 turn his "good " side to the camera, so that I could secure a better 

 study of him, and then begin on his nest and eggs. Some time that 

 night a neighbour's cat stole across the alley, destroyed the nest 

 and judging by the feathers, ate the female, leaving the male 



77 



