BLUE BIRD. 85 



especially during winter and early spring, they are often seen in search of 

 the insects turned out of their burrows by the plough. 



The song of the Blue Bird is a soft agreeable warble, often repeated 

 during the love-season, when it seldom sings without a gentle quivering 

 of the wings. When the period of migration arrives, its voice consists 

 merely of a tender and plaintive note, perhaps denoting the reluctance 

 with which it contemplates the approach of winter. In November most 

 of the individuals that have resided during the summer in the Northern 

 and Middle Districts, are seen high in the air moving southward along 

 with their families, or alighting to seek for food and enjoy repose. But 

 many are seen in winter, whenever a few days of fine weather occur, so 

 fond are they of their old haunts, and so easily can birds possessing 

 powers of flight like theirs, move from one place to another. Their re- 

 turn takes place early in February or March, when they appear in parties 

 of eight or ten of both sexes. When they alight at this season, the joy- 

 ous carols of the males are heard from the tops of the early-blooming sas- 

 safras and maple. 



During winter, they are extremely abundant in all the Southern States, 

 and more especially in the Floridas, where I found hundreds of them on 

 all the plantations that I visited. The species becomes rare in Maine, 

 still more so in Nova Scotia, and in Newfoundland and Labrador none 

 were seen by our exploring party. 



My excellent and learned friend Dr Richard Harlan of Philadel- 

 phia, told me that one day, while in the neighbourhood of that city, sit- 

 ting in the piazza of a friend's house, he observed that a pair of Blue 

 Birds had taken possession of a hole cut out expressly for them in the end 

 of the cornice above him. They had young, and were very solicitous for 

 their safety, insomuch that it was no uncommon thing to see the male 

 especially fly at a person who happened to pass by. A hen with her brood 

 in the yard came within a few yards of the piazza. The wrath of the 

 Blue Bird rose to such a pitch that, notwithstanding its great disparity 

 of strength, it flew at the hen with violence, and continued to assail her, 

 until she was at length actually forced to retreat and seek refuge under a 

 distant shrub, when the little fellow returned exultingly to his nest, and 

 there carolled his victory with great animation. At times, however, mat- 

 ters take a very difi'erent course, and you may recollect the combats of a 

 Purple Martin and a Blue Bird, of which I gave you an account in my 

 first volume. 



