Birds of Song and Story

by Elizabeth Grinnell; Joseph Grinnell

The mother soon takes to preparing for another brood, and the father assumes all the care of the young just out, leading them a short distance from the mother, and teaching them to hunt insects and berries. The little ones are not blue, as any one may see, but brown with speckled breasts. These speckled breasts of young birds are fashionable costumes for many other than bluebirds. They remind one of infantile bibs, to be discarded as soon as the young things eat and behave like their elders.

When the persimmons are ripe in the late fall whole families of bluebirds collect in the trees for the fruit. They love apples as well, but apples are hard unless in early spring after the frost has thawed out of them. So the birds take the persimmons first. It is at this time, when they are flitting from tree to tree, that any person who will take the trouble of hiding underneath and keeping still will catch glimpses of the yellow soles of the bluebird's feet. The legs are dark above the soles. There is a legend about this that is pleasing to know and half-way believed by lovers of legends.

And one need not be ashamed of one's fondness for legends. Legends are as old as the hills, and folk-lore has preserved them. Now that the printer has become the guardian of such things, we expect a legend with every bird and beast, and a life history of either is hardly complete without.

Nearly all the birds of North America are entitled to a legend through the nature-loving Indians, the first inhabitants of our country. They have left little data, but enough has been gleaned from their folk-lore to put us on the trail of many a delightful story. Some of our legends may be of recent date. but all have a fascination of their own. The ancients loved myth and weird, fanciful tales. We are descendants of the ancients, and we love the same things.

Once upon a dreary time a flood of water covered all the earth. The land birds were all huddled together in a little boat, twittering to each other of a "bright to-morrow," as they do to this day. As the storm grew harder the birds grew cold, not having any clothes up to that date. This was the first rain that ever came, and caught many things, of course, unprepared. The birds had been of naked skin, like the lizards, but their beaks had grown, else how could they have been twittering to one another of a bright to-morrow? On this very morrow of song, the boat being far above the mountain-tops, a single ray of sunshine appeared at a crack in the cabin-house. The bluebird always, from the very first, being on the lookout for stray bits of sunshine, sprang to the spot, which was just big enough for his two feet. When the sun went back behind the clouds it was found that the stray bit of it which the bluebird had hopped upon remained on the soles of his feet. That is the way the bluebird came by his yellow soles.

And he came by his blue coat in this wise: When the storm had spent itself the bluebird was the first to go out of the boat, straight toward heaven, singing as he went. When he got to the blue sky he stopped not, but pushed his way straight through, rubbing the tint of the sky right into his uncolored feathers, that had grown in a flash when he left the boat. His mate followed straight through the hole her lord had made, but of course she did not get so much blue as he, the hole being rubbed quite dry of its paint. Ever since the first flight of the bluebird somewhere the sun has shone through the rift he made in the sky and he carries hope of spring in his wake.

The bluebirds are good neighbors, never quarreling nor troubling other birds. In the late fall his note changes to a plaintive one, as if he were mourning for the dear, delightful days of summer-time and nursery joys. It is now that he, with his large family, may be seen on weed stalks in the open country, looking for belated insects and searching for beetles and spiders among the stones.

In darting for winged insects the bluebird does not take a sudden flight, but sways leisurely, as if he would not frighten his treasure by quick movements.

Besides this particular bluebird, so well known all over North America, there are two other members of the family, differing only slightly in coloring and similar in habits. These are the Western and the Arctic bluebirds.

The bluebirds are the morning-glories of our country. They are companions of the violet of spring and the asters in autumn. They belong to the blue sky and the country home and the city suburbs. When the English sparrow is weary of being made into pot-pie and baby-broth, it will go on its way to the North Pole or the Southern Ocean, and our darling in blue will have no enemy in all the land.