Passing of the Bluebird 31 



gregate. The tempests of winter, the floods 

 of spring, even the lightning's stroke, scarcely 

 make these trustful bluebirds afraid ; or, if 

 they flee at a time of great tumult, they soon 

 return, and there are but few days in a year 

 that I cannot see and hear these happy ten- 

 ants of a hollow tree. At one lonely spot, 

 alike free from man and the alien sparrow, 

 the bluebird is still as fixed a feature as the 

 blue sky ; but the tree cannot last much 

 longer, and then the birds will be driven to 

 some more remote locality. The times have 

 indeed changed. The bluebirds no longer 

 come to us, we must go to them. 



Until within a very few years, there was 

 a colony of bluebirds near my house, and 

 however the conditions of the weather af- 

 fefted the birds found scattered over the 

 country, here to-day and gone to-morrow, 

 those in the old hay-barrack were never far 

 away. I do not believe that the bluebird is 

 really dying out through natural causes, but 

 simply that they are or have been driven off. 

 The fatal blunder was the introduction of 

 the English sparrow, which never did one 

 particle of good, and now has become a posi- 

 tive curse, and one, I fear, beyond control. 



