38 BLUE-BIRD. 
ewn recommendation always along with him, and meets with a hearty 
welcome from eyery body. 
Though generally accounted a bird of passage, yet, so early as the 
middle of February, if the weather be open, he usually makes his ap- 
pearance about his old haunts, the barn, orchard, and fence posts. 
Storms and deep snows sometimes succeeding, he disappears for a 
time ; but about the middle of March is again seen, accompanied by 
his mate, visiting the box in the garden, or the hole in the old apple- 
tree, the cradle of some generations of his ancestors. “When he first 
begins his amours,” says a curious and correct observer, “ it is pleasing 
to behold his courtship, 21s solicitude to please and to secure the 
favor of his beloved female. He uses the tenderest expressions, sits 
close by her, caresses and sings to her his most endearing warblings. 
When seated together, if he espies an insect delicious to her taste, he 
takes it up, flies with it to her, spreads his wing over her, and puts it 
in her mouth.” * Ifa rival makes his appearance, —for they are 
ardent in their loves, — he quits her-in a moment, attacks and pursues 
the intruder as he shifts from place to place, in tones that bespeak 
the jealousy of his affection, conducts him, with many reproofs, beyond 
the extremities of his territory, and returns to warble out his trans- 
ports of triumph beside his beloved mate. The preliminaries being 
thus settled, and the spot fixed on, they begin to clean out the old 
nest and the rubbish of the former year, and to prepare for the re- 
ception of their future offspring. Soon after this, another sociable 
little pilgrim (Motacilla domestica House Wren) also arrives from the 
south, and, finding such a snug birth preoccupied, shows his spite, by 
watching a convenient opportunity, and, in the absence of the owner, 
popping mn and pulling out sticks, but takes special care to make off 
as fast as possible. 
The female lays five, and sometimes six eggs, of a pale blue color; 
and raises two, afid sometimes three broods in a season; the male 
taking the youngest under his particular care while the female is again 
sitting. Their principal food are insects, particularly large beetles, and 
others of the coleopterous kinds that lurk among old, dead, and decay- 
ing trees. Spiders are also a favorite repast with them. In the fall, 
they occasionally regale themselves on the berries of the sour gum; 
and, as winter approaches, on those of’ the red cedar, and on the fruit 
of a rough, hairy vine, that runs up and cleaves fast to the trunks of 
trees. Ripe persimmons is another of their favorite dishes, and many 
tips of the inner margins of the quill and tail-feathers, dull umber brown ; the base 
of the plumage, blackish gray. Under surfice— the cheeks, throat, breast, and 
insides of the wings, greenish blue, bordering on the abdomen to grayish blue; vent- 
feathers, and under tail-coverts, white ; tail beneath, and inside of the quill-feathers, 
olive brown, with a strong tinge of blue ; bill and feet, pitch black ; form, in general, 
that of S. Wilsonii, but the Bill is considerably narrower at the base, and propor- 
tionably larger, straighter, and less notched, and bent at the tip of the upper man- 
dible ; its breadth is equal to its depth; wings, three quarters of an inch shorter 
than the tail ; the second quill-feather is the longest; the first and third are equal, 
and about a line shorter; the tenth is an inch and a half shorter than the second ; 
tail, forked, or deeply emarginated, the central feathers being more than half an 
inch shorter than the exterior ones; legs and feet, simi. arly formed wth those of S. 
Wilsonii ; length, seven inches nine lines.” — Ep. 
* Letter from Mr. William Bartra y, to the author 
