NATURE AND NATURAL HISTORY 



THE bluebird is a bird without fault. All its 

 ways and sounds and habits and looks are 

 pleasing. It neither eats your fruit like the robin, 

 nor daubs your porch with mud like the phcebe, 

 nor brings a plague of bird lice as the latter often 

 does. It is half-domestic like robin and phcebe 

 without any of their vices. It does not awake you 

 in the early morning, nor tease your ear at any time 

 of day with its persistently reiterated notes. As an 

 insect-destroyer it must equal any of them, and as 

 a harbinger of spring it is the most welcome of them 

 all. It comes to its nest and young in the hollow of 

 the limb on the corner of my porch as softly as a 

 shadow, and when feeding its young it comes about 

 every minute nearly all day, till the twilight deep- 

 ens. All its ways are ways of gentleness. It is a bird 

 without snap or emphasis or sharpness of any kind. 

 I always visualize its note as blue like its back. Its 

 wing gestures are as pleasing as its note. The bird 

 has the quality of the thrush, with a touch of 

 something cerulean. 



Certain of our familiar birds, like the wren, get 

 on your nerves. Even the darling song sparrow will, 

 at the height of its season, go through its repertoire 



