g has begun, the
female talks the prettiest "baby talk" to her mate as he feeds her. The
nest-building rarely begins till thistledown can be had--so literally
are all the ways of this darling bird ways of softness and gentleness.
The nest is a thick, soft, warm structure, securely fastened in the fork
of a maple or an apple-tree.

None of our familiar birds endear themselves to us more than does the
bluebird. The first bluebird in the spring is as welcome as the blue sky
itself. The season seems softened and tempered as soon as we hear his
note and see his warm breast and azure wing. His gentle manners, his
soft, appealing voice, not less than his pleasing hues, seem born of the
bright and genial skies. He is the spirit of the April days incarnated
in a bird. He has the quality of winsomeness, like the violet and the
speedwell among the flowers. Not strictly a songster, yet his every note
and call is from out the soul of harmony. The bluebird is evidently an
offshoot from the thrush family, and without the thrush's gift of song;
still his voice affords us much of the same pleasure.

How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer
them suitable nesting-retreats! Bring them something from nature,
something with the bark on--a section of a dry beech or maple limb in
which the downy woodpecker has excavated his chamber and passed the
winter or reared his brood; fasten it in early spring upon the corner of
your porch, or on the trunk of a near-by tree, and see what interesting
neighbors you will soon have. One summer I brought home from one of my
walks to the woods a section, two or three feet long, of a large yellow
birch limb which contained such a cavity as I speak of, and I wired it
to one of the posts of the rustic porch at Woodchuck Lodge. The next
season a pair of bluebirds reared two broods in it. The incubation of
the eggs for the second brood was well under way when I appeared upon
the scene in early July. My sudden presence so near their treasures, and
my lingering there with books and newspapers, disturbed the birds a good
deal. The first afternoon the mother bird did not enter the cavity for
hours. I shall always remember the pretty and earnest manner in which
the male tried to reassure her and persuade her that the danger was not
so imminent as it appeared to be, probably encouraging a confidence in
his mate which he did not himself share. The mother bird would alight at
the entrance t