SONG-BIRDS.
- Breeds:
- All through its range.
- Nest:
- Hardly to be called a structure as it is usually merely a lining in a decayed knot hole, a bird-house, or the abandoned hole of the Woodpecker.
- Eggs:
- 4—6, pale blue, shading sometimes to white.
- Range:
- Eastern United States to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, north to Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia; south in winter, from the Middle States to the Gulf States and Cuba. Bermuda, resident.
The Bluebird is the colour-bearer of the spring brigade, even as the Song Sparrow is the bugler. There may be snow on the ground, and the chimney nightly tells the complaint of the wind. All other signs fail, but when we see the Bluebird in his azure robe and hear his liquid notes (he is April’s minstrel), we know that spring is close at hand, for in autumn and winter the blue coat is veiled with rusty-brown, as if the murky storms had cast their shadows upon it. The Bluebird’s note is pleasing and mellow, mingling delightfully with the general spring chorus, but in itself it ranks more with the music of the Warblers than with its own Thrush kin. It has a rather sad tone, a trifle suggestive of complaint or pity. Heard at a distance it has a purling quality. Uttered close at hand, as when the birds go to and fro about their nests, it sounds as if their domestic arrangements were being discussed with the subdued, melancholy voice so often assumed by unwilling housewives. Then the male will fly off on a marketing expedition, murmuring to himself, “Dear, dear, think of it, think of it!” In fact, these birds seem to be practical, every-day sort of little creatures, and very seldom exhibit any tokens of affection after the nesting season begins. Yet the Bluebird is one to which romance strongly attaches us, its notes recall the first thrill of early spring, and we cannot disassociate him from blooming orchards. In the autumn he is one of the latest to call to us, the last leaf (so to speak) on the tree of beautifully coloured Song-birds, from which the Oriole, Tanager, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and Cardinal have dropped away.
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