Birds Sc 

 Nature Magazine 



Vol. 1— No. 1 



Old Series: Vol. 20, No. 4 



MAY. 1907 



Price 20 Cents 



$1.50 a Year Postpaid 



How the Blue Birds Came Back 



By ELIZABETH and JOSEPH GRINNELL 



YESTERDAY the snow melted from 

 the top of the great rocks in the 

 woods; the evergreens shading the 

 rocks lost their white load that had 

 been bearing down the branches for a 

 month ; the fences straggled their lean legs 

 wide apart, as if it were summer, only the 

 tips of their toes resting on the surface 

 snow; the north roof of the barn fringed 

 itself w^ith icicles that tumbled down by 

 noon, sticking up at the base of the barn in 

 the drifts head foremost ; the top dressing 

 of white powder that for weeks had adorned 

 the woodpiles sifted down through the sticks 

 in a wet scramble for the bottom. 



But yesterday the south wind puckered 

 up its lips and blew all over everything in 

 sight. The sun shines across the dooryard 

 as it hasn't shone for so long, making a 

 thin coat of mud just at the edge of the 

 chips and around the doorsteps. But what 

 matters? The children run in and out, 

 tracking up the clean floors, taking their 

 scolding with good cheer. Isn't spring 

 here? and don't they hear the bluebird's 

 note in the orchard? 



Run and put up some more little boxes 

 on the shed and the fence-posts. Clean out 

 the last year's nests in the hollow trees. 

 Tell the old cat to "keep mum" and "lie 

 low," or she will be put in a bag and 

 dropped to the bottom of the very first 

 hole in the ice. Cats are all right in the 

 dead of winter, when Old Boreas is frantic 

 in his annual mad fit. She can sit on the 

 rug and purr to her heart's content ; but 

 when the bluebirds come, if she bethinks 



herself of the fact, and sharpens her claws 

 against the trunk of a cherry-tree, she would 

 better look out. From the orchard comes 

 a soft, agreeable, oft-repeated note, there is 

 a quivering of wings outspread, and "he" 

 is here. There may be only one or two 

 or six singers. They have left the lady 

 bluebirds in a safe place until they are 

 sure of the weather. If the outlook be bad 

 to-morrow, the birds will retire out of sight 

 and wait for another warm spell. But 

 spring is really here, and the good work of 

 the sun goes on. In a day or two the lad\ 

 birds appear modestly, of paler hue than the 

 males, quiet, but quick and glad of motion. 

 Little by little, and by very winning 

 ways, does this gentle blue courtier pay his 

 suit of Miss Bluebird. A chance ac- 

 quaintance sidles up to the same branch on 

 which the two have been sitting. Bluebird 

 courtier likes him not; he will have no rival, 

 and so he drives the intruder away as far 

 as the next tree, returning to his sweet and 

 singing a low warble about something we 

 do not understand. Probably he is giving 

 her to understand that he will look to the 



Bluebird Babies Look Alike 



