584 
A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS 
Yet she’s everything to Robin, 
Silent partner though she be; 
Source and theme and inspiration 
Of each madrigal and glee. 
For as she with mute devotion 
Shapes and curves the plastic nest, 
Fashioning a tiny cradle 
With the pressure of her breast, 
So the love in that soft bosom 
Moulds his being as ’twere clay, 
Prints upon his breast the music 
Of his most impassioned lay. 
And when next you praise the Robin, 
Flinging wide with tuneful gate 
To his eager brood of love-notes, 
Don’t forget the Robin’s Mate. 
— Elisa Gilbert Ives 
Bluebird. Siala sialis. R. 
Length: 6.50-7 inches. 
Male: Azure-blue above. Wings blue with some dark edgings. 
Breast brick-red, lower parts white. Bill and feet black. 
Female: Dull blue above. Breast paler and more rusty. Young with 
speckled breast and back. 
Song: A sweet plaintive warble, seeming to say, “Dear! dear! think 
of it, think of it ! ” Burroughs says it continually calls “ Purity, 
Purity”; in either case the accent is the same. 
Season: A resident species, though the majority come early in March 
and retire to the South in late October. 
Nest: Hardly to be called a structure, as it is usually merely a lining 
in a decayed knothole, a birdhouse, or the abandoned hole of the 
Woodpecker. 
Eggs: 4-6, pale blue, shading sometimes to white. 
“ The common and familiar Bluebird (fig. 22) is an inhab- 
itant of all the states east of the Rocky Mountains from the Gulf 
of Mexico northward into Canada. It winters as far north as 
southern Illinois in the Mississippi Valley, and Pennsylvania in 
the east ; in spring it is one of the first migrants to arrive in 
the northern states, and is always welcomed as an indication of 
the final breaking up of winter. It frequents orchards and 
gardens, where it builds its nest in hollow trees, or takes ad- 
vantage of a nesting box provided by the enterprising farmer’s 
boy. 
