BLUEBIRD. 



I have not altered the song in the slightest way in mak- 

 ing this adaptation; the fit was a mere "happen so." 

 But the vocabulary of the Robin is extensive ; he might 

 or he might not have sung the above lines to his mate, 

 what / heard him sing was what I had learned from a 

 book! How impossible it is to be a disinterested inter- 

 preter of bird music t 



Bluebird This is one of the earliest birds to arrive 



ffialia sialit in the 8pr ing; it is a question which we 



March loth '* are Ukelv to meet firet > the Bluebird or the 

 Robin, but not infrequently a flash of the 

 cerulean color tells us the Bluebird has won in the race 

 northward. His personal appearance is tasteful if not 

 aesthetic. Upper parts including wings and tail ultra- 

 marine blue; there is a rusty tinge to the feather- tips in 

 the fall; under parts a light burnt sienna or chestnut 

 tone; feathers beneath the tail white. Female much 

 paler in color; the upper parts gray-blue. Nest gener- 

 ally in the hollow of some old orchard tree, or often in 

 the convenient " bird house " ; it is lined with fine 

 grasses. Egg a blue- white. This bird is common in the 

 eastern United States as far west as the eastern slopes of 

 the Rocky Mountains; its northern range-limit is Mani- 

 toba and Nova Scotia; it breeds throughout its range, 

 and winters from southern New York to the Gulf States. 

 Before the snow has melted, and while the air is still 

 piercing chill and the cold gray clouds chase each other 

 across a forbidding sky, the key-note of the spring sym- 

 phony is struck by a little Bluebird who is perched 

 somewhere among the bare, brown branches of the old 

 maple beside the road, or the apple- tree in the orchard. 

 The tones are unmistakable, quavering, tentative, un- 

 certain, a bit tender and sentimental, and far more ap- 

 pealing than the robust ones of the Robin; here they are: 



