LAND BIRDS. 729 
it is difficult to reinstate it. Although it may continue to nest in distant 
orchards and about the edges of woodlands, it still avoids the farm dwellings 
and village gardens where it was formerly an abundant bird. 
The nest, which is generally placed in a cavity of some kind and usually 
at no great height from the ground, consists of grasses, feathers, and other 
soft and fibrous materials, and is often built as early as the first week in 
April, although more often about the middle of the month in the southern 
half of the state. A second brood is usually reared in June or July and 
many observers believe that a third brood is occasionally raised. The 
eggs are four to six, of a clear pale blue, without spots, and average .82 
by .64 inches. Occasionally the eggs laid are pure white without any 
tint of blue, and this seems to be an individual mark, second and third 
sets from the same birds showing the same peculiarity, and this fact has 
been used sometimes as proof that the same pair of birds return year after 
year to the old nesting place. 
About midsummer the young of the first brood, with perhaps some of 
the old birds, collect in loose flocks and remain together until their de- 
parture for the south in September and October, being joined before 
beginning their journey by the old birds and the young of the second 
broods. At this time they frequent open fields and the borders of woods, 
where they feed freely upon grasshoppers and other terrestrial insects 
and also eat considerable quantities of the berries of the various sumacs, 
as well as wild cherries, elderberries, poke-berries, huckleberries and 
doubtless many other species. 
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 
Adult male: Entire upper surface, including wings and tail, bright blue; under parts 
chestnut or cinnamon-brown, except the belly, which is white. Adult female similar, 
but the blue above and brown below duller and grayer. In autumn and winter all the 
blue feathers are tipped with rusty and the brown feathers with gray or white. Young 
birds at first show blue only on the wing and tail-feathers; the back is marked with dots 
of silvery or grayish white, and the under parts are whitish, each feather bordered with 
gray or brown. : . ; : 
Length of male, 6.50 to 7 inches; wing about 4; tail about 2.75. The female is decidedly 
smaller. 
