Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LAND BIRDS ORDER PERCHING BIRDS FAMILY THRUSHES 1. (766) BLUEBIRD A summer resident, quite common. A party of us saw one March 7, 1915, but the regular time of arrival is about March 20. It remains till the first of November and stragglers are seen even later. The bluebird is a good fighter. It spends much time peeping here and there for nesting places. Two broods are reared. While the robin's spring note is the first for the city, the bluebird is usually seen a morning or two earlier in the country. Its note is a welcome sound on that March morning when the "earth tinge on his breast and the sky tinge on his back" give us the first color of spring as he flies from "post to post." That rich contralto warble often heard in the air before the bird is seen, is associated with early spring. Burroughs says its song expresses love. After it changes the first love song to one of only three notes, the "de-a-rie" is poured forth with that richness of quality peculiar to the bluebird. About April 20 it settles down to housekeeping and the song is heard less. In the autumn its notes have that sweet plaintiveness quite in keeping with the season. 2. (761) AMERICAN ROBIN A very abundant summer resident. Not all that are seen during the spring migration remain. Some go farther north for the summer and reappear on their way south in the autumn. It arrives from the i8th to 27thof March and departs the last of October, though stragglers may be seen later, occasionally in the winter. April 3, 1917, a pair commenced building a nest on a porch of one of the houses near the city. Two or three broods are reared each season. The numbers in parentheses are taken from the Check-List of the American Ornithologists' Union. I do not know as it is universal, but in many cases the males g...