THE HERALD OF SPRING. 



CHARLES E. JENNEY. 



Before the snow flies 

 A bit of Summer skies 

 Comes flitting down 

 Through Winter's frown 

 To cheer up waiting eyes. 



ONE gray February day, when 

 dirty patches of snow are still 

 lingering on the north side of 

 rocks and walls, as you gaze 

 across a dreary landscape, you espy a 

 bit of bright color on the bar-post that 

 brightens up your spirit. 'Tis the first 

 bluebird, and that means that spring is 

 coming. His cheery little ditty seems 

 to say, "Spring is coming, spring is 

 coming, spring is here." He has been 

 farther south during the winter, for he 

 seldom stays in Massachusetts in De- 

 cember and January and he thinks it a 

 little chilly just now, for his feathers 

 are all fluffed up around him so that 

 he looks like an animated dumpling. 



He has come back to locate his nest 

 site — to see first if the old nest hole of 

 past years is suitable, for he is a great 

 home-lover, and, if not, to select a 

 new one. 



In March you will see the bluebirds 

 often investigating rotten bar-posts, 

 hollow cedars, old woodpecker holes, 

 and decayed apple-tree stumps. And 

 in the latter part of the month the 

 females are with them. 



Then one April day Mr. Bluebird 

 sings always from a limb of a certain 

 apple-tree, and down in the trunk, in 

 an abandoned woodpecker's hole, are 

 four pretty light blue eggs. 



Every old orchard has its family of 

 bluebirds, and they come back to the 

 same nest every year until something 

 happens to scare them away from 

 it. A rotten bar-post or fence rail is 

 a promising site also, and they peck 

 out a hole with their short bills and 

 round it out quite as neatly, as that 

 feathered carpenter, the woodpecker. 

 When they get in a little ways you 

 may see the chips flying out of the 

 aperture, though no worker is in sight, 

 and when it is almost done every now 

 and then a blue head will pop out with 



a beak full of loose wood, which is 

 tossed away. Then a few clean chips 

 are left and the bird's own soft down 

 lines the home. 



Often they will make use of wooden 

 boxes set on poles or placed in the 

 trees for their benefit. They are very 

 quiet, peaceful birds, so the entrance 

 to their homes should never be much 

 larger than their own small bodies re- 

 quire for admittance. 



The scrubby cedars that grow along 

 the New England coast make excellent 

 nooks and corners for the bluebird's 

 home and the berries provide him with 

 food late in the season. I have even 

 found a pair nesting in a cedar grove 

 on the extreme end of a rocky point 

 exposed to the full force of the south- 

 east storms that sweep up Buzzard's 

 bay. Usually, however, they prefer the 

 green fields and orchards of further 

 inland. 



One pair for five or six years nested 

 in a hollow about twelve inches deep 

 formed in the crotch where a cedar 

 tree branched into two parts. It could 

 not have been a comfortable or well- 

 chosen home, for it was open to the 

 weather at the top and it would seem 

 as if it must be flooded in a heavy rain- 

 storm. But it was only abandoned by 

 the birds when it had become known 

 to every boy and egg collector in the 

 village as the hereditary estate of this 

 family. 



During April and May the bluebird 

 is everywhere visible and audible, but 

 in midsummer he is not so often seen. 

 He is essentially a bird of the spring 

 with us. His familiar contemporaries 

 are the catbird and the robin, but he is 

 the earliest in the year of them all. 

 Sometimes, though not often, he stops 

 all winter with us, and his red breast 

 warms the wmter landscape which it 

 dares to challenge. 



