BLUEBIRD. 
SlALIA SIALIS. 
Char. Male : above, azure blue, duller on cheeks; throat, breast, and 
sides reddish brown ; belly and under tail-coverts white ; shafts of feathers 
in wing and tail, black. Female : duller, blue of back mixed with grayish 
brown ; breast with less of rufous tint. Length about 6^ inches. 
Nest. In a hollow tree, deserted Woodpecker’s hole, or other e.xcava- 
tion or crevice, or in a bird-box ; meagrely lined with grass or feathers. 
^Si^- 4"6 ; usually pale blue, sometimes almost white ; 0.85 X 0.65. 
These well-known and familiar favorites inhabit almost the 
whole eastern side of the continent of America, from the 48th 
parallel to the very line of the tropics. Some appear to mi- 
grate in winter to the Bermudas and Bahama islands, though 
most of those which pass the summer in the North only retire 
to the Southern States or the tableland of Mexico. In South 
Carolina and Georgia they were abundant in January and Feb- 
ruary, and even on the 12th and 28th of the former month, the 
weather being mild, a few of these wanderers warbled out their 
simple notes from the naked limbs of the long-leaved pines. 
Sometimes they even pass the winter in Pennsylvania, or at 
least make their appearance with almost every relenting of the 
severity of the winter or warm gleam of thawing sunshine. 
From this circumstance of their roving about in quest of their 
scanty food, like the hard-pressed and hungry Robin Redbreast, 
who by degrees gains such courage from necessity as to enter 
the cottage for his allowed crumbs, it has, without foundation, 
