78 BLUEBIRD. 
not yet become abundant, our beautiful songster is familiar to every child.—In the 
North most of the birds begin building their nests by the first of May, in south- 
western Missouri in the beginning of April, and in Texas and Florida as early as the 
last of February. In the Northern States they usually raise two broods yearly, and 
farther South very often three. 
The Bluebird always selects for the site of its nest some ready-made hole in a 
tree. In uncultivated districts it chooses the abandoned holes of Woodpeckers and, in 
the absence of these, hollow stumps, posts, and large knot holes. In cultivated districts 
the birds invariably prefer the different kinds of boxes which the farmers and lovers of 
birds put up for them. Everywhere in our orchards, gardens, and parks these beautiful 
birds can be made to feel perfectly at home, if convenient boxes are fastened in trees 
for them. 
When finally, after a long twittering consultation, the pair has found a suitable 
nesting site, materials, especially grasses, plant-stems, bark-strips, and, now and then, a 
feather, are industriously carried into it. Like all nests built in holes, the Bluebird’s 
is a very inartistic structure. The eggs—four or five, sometimes six, in number—are 
pale greenish-blue, very rarely white. The male never strays far from the nest while 
the female is breeding. He often flies to her with a captured insect, sits on the perch 
before the entrance, ever and anon peeping into the interior and singing to her his 
most beautiful strains, accompanied by the fluttering and quivering of his wings. A 
pair of these birds nesting in the garden near the house, presents an idyllic, charming, 
and attractive family picture, one which in all its phases offers to the intelligent ob- 
server great pleasure and the best entertainment. This is the case in a still greater 
degree after the young are hatched. Then the real work begins for the watchful, tender, 
and solicitous male. The whole day is spent in the greatest activity; hardly a minute 
passes without his coming with insects with which to tempt the appetite of the young. 
It is, indeed, astonishing what an immense quantity of worms, flies, caterpillars, moths, 
beetles, and other insects, is necessary to satisfy the hunger of the little ones. The 
parents are kept continually flying to and fro, from the earliest hours of morn until the 
twilight falls. Right by the side of my dwelling in southwestern Missouri, in a group 
of young oaks, a nesting box had been put up, in which a pair of Bluebirds annually 
reared several broods. As it was only a few steps from my verandah, I could observe 
without trouble all the proceedings on the nest. Amid this same group of trees the 
children had their play ground and a much used hammock was swung beneath the 
branches, but neither the Bluebirds nor a pair of Orchard Orioles—which also had their 
hanging nest in the top of a thickly branched oak—allowed themselves to be in the 
least disturbed, either by the noise and mirth of the children or the swinging to and fro 
of the hammock. When they came flying with their bills full of food, they would first 
perch on the top of the tree, look anxiously around, and then fly on swiftly to the 
perch of the box from whence they could feed the young; then, after waiting a moment, 
the old birds disappeared in the interior, only to reappear in an instant with refuse 
matter from the nest. With peculiarly fluttering uneasy motions this disagreeable duty 
is performed. The refuse is dropped a short distance from the nest and the bird flies 
to the next fence or tree to clean its beak. 
