BLUE-BIRD. 
447 
spiders and grasshoppers, for which they often, in com- 
pany with their young, in autumn, descend to the earth, 
in open pasture fields or waste grounds. Like our 
Thrushes, they, early in spring, also collect the common 
wire-worm, or lulus , for food, as well as other kinds of 
insects, which they commonly watch for, while perched 
on the fences or low boughs of trees, and dart after them 
to the ground as soon as perceived. They are not, how- 
ever, flycatchers, like the Sylvias and Muscicapas , but 
are rather industrious searchers for subsistence, like the 
Thrushes, whose habits they wholly resemble in their 
mode of feeding. In the autumn, they regale themselves 
on various kinds of berries, as those of the sour gum, 
wild cherry, and others ; and later in the season, as win- 
ter approaches, they frequent the red cedars and several 
species of sumach for their berries, eat persimmons in 
the Middle States, and many other kinds of fruits, and 
even seeds , the latter of which never enter into the diet 
of the proper Flycatchers. They have also, occasionally, 
in a state of confinement, been reared and fed on soaked 
bread and vegetable diet, on which they thrive as well as 
the Robin. 
The song of the Blue-Bird, which continues almost 
uninterruptedly from March to October, is a soft, rather 
feeble, but delicate and pleasing warble, often repeated 
at various times of the day, but most frequently in early 
spring, when the sky is serene, and the temperature mild 
and cheering. At this season, before the earnest Robin 
pours out his more energetic lay from the orchard tree or 
fence-rail, the simple song of this almost domestic favor- 
ite is heard nearly alone ; and if, at length, he be rival- 
ed, at the dawn of day, by superior and bolder songsters, 
he still relieves the silence of later hours, by his unwea- 
ried and affectionate attempts to please and accompany 
