When Nature made the bluebird she wished to propitiate both the sky
and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and
the hue of the other on his breast, and ordained that his appearance
in the spring should denote that the strife and war between these two
elements was at an end. He is the peace-harbinger; in him the
celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. He means
the furrow and he means the warmth; he means all the soft, wooing
influences of the spring on one hand, and the retreating footsteps of
winter on the other.
It is sure to be a bright March morning when you first hear his note;
and it is as if the milder influences up above had found a voice and
let a word fall upon your ear, so tender is it and so prophetic, a
hope tinged with a regret.
"Bermuda! Bermuda! Bermuda!" he seems to say, as if both invoking and
lamenting, and, behold! Bermuda follows close, though the little
pilgrim may only be repeating the tradition of his race, himself
having come only from Florida, the Carolinas, or even from Virginia,
where he has found his Bermuda on some broad sunny hillside thickly
studded with cedars and persimmon-trees.
In New York and in New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple
the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith.
The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for
tow of three days before it takes visible shape before you. The males
are the pioneers, and come several days in advance of the females. By
the time both are here and the pairs have begun to prospect for a
place to nest, sugar-making is over, the last vestige of snow has
disappeared, and the plow is brightening its mould-board in the new
furrow.
The bluebird enjoys the preëminence of being the first bit of color
that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about
the same time--the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird--are clad in
neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet; but the bluebird brings one of
the primary hues and the divinest of them all.
This bird also has the distinction of answering very nearly to the
robin redbreast of English memory, and was by the early settlers of
New England christened the blue robin.
It is a size or two larger, and the ruddy hue of its breast does not
verge so nearly on an orange, but the manners and habits of the two
birds are very much alike. Our bird has the softer voice, but the
English redbreast is much the more skilled musician. He has indeed a
fine, animated warble, heard nearly the year through about English
gardens and along the old hedge-rows, that is quite beyond the compass
of our bird's instrument. On the other hand, our bird is associated
with the spring as the British species cannot be, being a winter
resident also, while the brighter sun and sky of the New World have
given him a coat that far surpasses that of his transatlantic cousin.
It is worthy of remark that among British birds there is no blue bird.
The cerulean tint seems much rarer among the feathered tribes there
than here. On this continent there are at least three species of the
common bluebird, while in all our woods there is the blue jay and the
indigo-bird,--the latter so intensely blue as to fully justify its
name. There is also the blue grosbeak, not much behind the indigo-bird
in intensity of color; and among our warblers the blue tint is very
common.
It is interesting to know that the bluebird is not confined to any one
section of the country; and that when one goes West he will still have
this favorite with him, though a little changed in voice and color,
just enough to give variety without marring the identity.
The Western bluebird is considered a distinct species, and is perhaps
a little more brilliant and showy than its Eastern brother; and
Nuttall thinks its song is more varied, sweet, and tender. Its color
approaches to ultramarine, while it has a sash of chestnut-red across
its shoulders,--all the effects, I suspect, of that wonderful air and
sky of California, and of those great Western plains; or, if one goes
a little higher up into the mountainous regions of the West, he finds
the Arctic bluebird, the ruddy brown on the breast changed to a
greenish blue, and the wings longer and more pointed; in other
respects not differing much from our species.
The bluebird usually builds its nest in a hole in a stump or stub, or
in an old cavity excavated by a woodpecker, when such can be had; but
its first impulse seems to be to start in the world in much more
style, and the happy pair make a great show of house-hunting about the
farm buildings, now half persuaded to appropriate a dove-cote, then
discussing in a lively manner a last year's swallow nest, or
proclaiming with much flourish and flutter that they have taken the
wren's house, or the tenement of the purple martin; till finally
nature becomes too urgent, when all this pretty make-believe ceases,
and most of them settle back upon the old family stumps and knotholes
in remote fields, and go to work in earnest.
In such situations the female is easily captured by approaching very
stealthily and covering the entrance to the nest. The bird seldom
makes any effort to escape, seeing how hopeless the case is, and keeps
her place on the nest till she feels your hand closing around her. I
have looked down into the cavity and seen the poor thing palpitating
with fear and looking up with distended eyes, but never moving till I
had withdrawn a few paces; then she rushes out with a cry that brings
the male on the scene in a hurry. He warbles and lifts his wings
beseechingly, but shows no anger or disposition to scold and complain
like most birds. Indeed, this bird seems incapable of uttering a harsh
note, or of doing a spiteful, ill-tempered thing.
The ground-builders all have some art or device to decoy one away from
the nest, affecting lameness, a crippled wing, or a broken back,
promising an easy capture if pursued. The tree-builders depend upon
concealing the nest or placing it beyond reach. But the bluebird has
no art either way, and its nest is easily found.
About the only enemies of the sitting bird or the nest is in danger of
are snakes and squirrels. I knew of a farm-boy who was in the habit of
putting his hand down into a bluebird's nest and taking out the old
bird whenever he came that way. One day he put his hand in, and,
feeling something peculiar, withdrew it hastily, when it was instantly
followed by the head of an enormous black snake. The boy took to his
heels and the snake gave chase, pressing him close till a plowman near
by came to the rescue with his ox-whip.
There never was a happier or more devoted husband than the male
bluebird is. But among nearly all our familiar birds the serious cares
of life seem to devolve almost entirely upon the female. The male is
hilarious and demonstrative, the female serious and anxious about her
charge. The male is the attendant of the female, following her
wherever she goes. He never leads, never directs, but only seconds and
applauds. If his life is all poetry and romance, hers is all business
and prose. She has no pleasure but her duty, and no duty but to look
after her nest and brood. She shows no affection for the male, no
pleasure in his society; she only tolerates him as a necessary evil,
and, if he is killed, goes in quest of another in the most
business-like manner, as you would go for the plumber or the glazier.
In most cases the male is the ornamental partner in the firm, and
contributes little of the working capital. There seems to be more
equality of the sexes among the woodpeckers, wrens, and swallows;
while the contrast is greatest, perhaps, in the bobolink family, where
the courting is done in the Arab fashion, the female fleeing with all
her speed and the male pursuing with equal precipitation; and were it
not for the broods of young birds that appear, it would be hard to
believe that the intercourse ever ripened into anything more intimate.
With the bluebirds the male is useful as well as ornamental. He is
the gay champion and escort of the female at all times, and while she
is sitting he feeds her regularly. It is very pretty to watch them
building their nest. The male is very active in hunting out a place
and exploring the boxes and cavities, but seems to have no choice in
the matter and is anxious only to please and to encourage his mate,
who has the practical turn and knows what will do and what will not.
After she has suited herself he applauds her immensely, and away the
two go in quest of material for the nest, the male acting as guard and
flying above and in advance of the female. She brings all the material
and does all the work of building, he looking on and encouraging her
with gesture and song. He acts also as inspector of her work, but I
fear is a very partial one. She enters the nest with her bit of dry
grass or straw, and, having adjusted it to her notion, withdraws and
waits near by while he goes in and looks it over. On coming out he
exclaims very plainly, "Excellent! Excellent!" and away the two go
again for more material.
The bluebirds, when they build about the farm buildings, sometimes
come into contact with the swallows. The past season I knew a pair to
take forcible possession of the domicile of a pair of the latter,--the
cliff species that now stick their nests under the eaves of the barn.
The bluebirds had been broken up in a little bird-house near by, by
the rats or perhaps a weasel, and being no doubt in a bad humor, and
the season being well advanced, they made forcible entrance into the
adobe tenement of their neighbors, and held possession of it for some
days, but I believe finally withdrew, rather than live amid such a
squeaky, noisy colony. I have heard that these swallows, when ejected
from their homes in that way by the phoebe-bird, have been known to
fall to and mason up the entrance to the nest while their enemy was
inside of it, thus having a revenge as complete and cruel as anything
in human annals.
The bluebirds and the house wrens more frequently come into collision.
A few years ago I put up a little bird-house in the back end of my
garden for the accommodation of the wrens, and every season a pair of
bluebirds looked into the tenement and lingered about several days,
leading me to hope that they would conclude to occupy it. But they
finally went away, and later in the season the wrens appeared, and,
after a little coquetting, were regularly installed in their old
quarters, and were as happy as only wrens can be.