In symbol of azure, a vision of right.
So hopeful, confiding, thou brave mountaineer,
Thou bringest to April a mighty good cheer.
Chill winter is vanquished, his rigors forgot,
The Lord is on earth,—what else, matters not.
The Mountain Bluebird is of regular occurrence but of very irregular distribution in eastern Washington, and is scarcely known west of the Cascades. John Fannin found it in British Columbia “west occasionally, to Chilliwack, and other points on the lower Fraser; also Vancouver Island,” but we have only two records of its occurrence on the Pacific slope in Washington[43]. The bird ranges up to the highest peaks of the central divide, but it is not at all common in the mountains. It seems to prefer more open situations and, so far from being exclusively boreal in its tastes, has been found nesting at as low an altitude as Wallula, on the banks of the Columbia River.
At Chelan in a typical season (1896) the migrations opened with the appearance, on the 24th day of February, of seven males of most perfect beauty. They deployed upon the townsite in search of insects, and uttered plaintive notes of Sialian quality, varied by dainty, thrush-like tsooks of alarm when too closely pressed. They did not at any time attempt song, and the entire song tradition, including the “delightful warble” of Townsend, appears to be quite without foundation, as in the case of S. m. occidentalis. On the 15th of March a flock of fifty Bluebirds, all males, were sighted flying in close order over the mountain-side, a vision of loveliness which was enhanced by the presence of a dozen or more Westerns. Several flocks were observed at this season in which the two species mingled freely. On the 27th of the same month the last great wave of migration was noted, and some two hundred birds, all “Arctics” now, and at least a third of them females, quartered themselves upon us for a day,—with what delighted appreciation upon our part may best be imagined. The males are practically all azure; but the females have a much more modest garb of reddish gray, or stone-olive, which flashes into blue on wings and tail, only as the bird flits from post to post.
In nesting, Mountain Bluebirds sometimes display the same confidence shown by the darker species; and their adoption into urban, or at least village life, would seem to be only a matter of time. They are a gentle breed, and it is an honor of which we may well strive to prove worthy, to be chosen as hosts by these distinguished gentlefolk.
“Gentle,” as applied to Bluebirds, has always the older sense of noble,—noble because brave. My attention was first called to a nest in the timbered foothills of Yakima County, because its valiant owner furiously beset a Flicker of twice his size, a clumsy villain who had lighted by mistake on the Bluebird’s nesting stub. The gallant defender did not use these tactics on the bird-man, but his accents were sternly accusing as the man proceeded to investigate a clean-cut hole eight feet up in a pine stub four feet thru. Five dainty eggs of the palest possible blue rested at the bottom of the cavity on a soft cushion of fine grasses.
This must have been a typical structure, but near Chelan I found the birds nesting at the end of a tunnel driven into a perpendicular bank much frequented by Bank Swallows. The original miner might have been a Swallow, but the Bluebirds had certainly enlarged the hole and rounded it. There were no available trees for a mile or so around, but—well, really now, it did give one a turn to see this bit of heaven quench itself in the ground—for love’s sake.