(_Guiraca cA|rulea_) Finch family
_Length_--7 inches. About an inch larger than the English sparrow.
_Male_--Deep blue, dark, and almost black on the back; wings
and tail black, slightly edged with blue, and the former
marked with bright chestnut. Cheeks and chin black. Bill heavy
and bluish.
_Female_--Grayish brown above, sometimes with bluish tinge on
head, lower back, and shoulders. Wings dark olive-brown, with
faint buff markings; tail same shade as wings, but with
bluish-gray markings. Underneath brownish cream-color, the
breast feathers often blue at the base.
_Range_--United States, from southern New England westward to
the Rocky Mountains and southward into Mexico and beyond. Most
common in the Southwest. Rare along the Atlantic seaboard.
_Migrations_--May. September. Summer resident.
This beautiful but rather shy and solitary bird occasionally wanders
eastward to rival the bluebird and the indigo bunting in their rare
and lovely coloring, and eclipse them both in song. Audubon, we
remember, found the nest in New Jersey. Pennsylvania is still favored
with one now and then, but it is in the Southwest only that the blue
grosbeak is as common as the evening grosbeak is in the Northwest.
Since rice is its favorite food, it naturally abounds where that
cereal grows. Seeds and kernels of the hardest kinds, that its heavy,
strong beak is well adapted to crack, constitute its diet when it
strays beyond the rice-fields.
Possibly the heavy bills of all the grosbeaks make them look stupid
whether they are or not--a characteristic that the blue grosbeak's
habit of sitting motionless with a vacant stare many minutes at a time
unfortunately emphasizes.
When seen in the roadside thickets or tall weeds, such as the field
sparrow chooses to frequent, it shows little fear of man unless
actually approached and threatened, but whether this fearlessness
comes from actual confidence or stupidity is by no means certain.
Whatever the motive of its inactivity, it accomplishes an end to be
desired by the cleverest bird; its presence is almost never suspected
by the passer-by, and its grassy nest on a tree-branch, containing
three or four pale bluish-white eggs, is never betrayed by look or
sign to the marauding small boy.
[Illustration: YOUNG CRESTED FLYCATCHERS WITH HAIR STANDING ON END.]
[Illustration: Copyright, 1900, by A. R Dugmore
HUNGRY YOUNG MOCKING-BIRDS]
[Illustration: YOUNG MOCKING-BIRD]