The males
are the pioneers, and come several days in advance of the females. By
the time both are here and the pairs have begun to prospect for a
place to nest, sugar-making is over, the last vestige of snow has
disappeared, and the plow is brightening its mould-board in the new
furrow.
The bluebird enjoys the pre?minence of being the first bit of color
that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about
the same time--the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird--are clad in
neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet; but the bluebird brings one of
the primary hues and the divinest of them all.
This bird also has the distinction of answering very nearly to the
robin redbreast of English memory, and was by the early settlers of
New England christened the blue robin.
It is a size or two larger, and the ruddy hue of its breast does not
verge so nearly on an orange, but the manners and habits of the two
birds are very much alike. Our bird has the softer voice, but the
English redbreast is much the more skilled musician. He has indeed a
fine, animated warble, heard nearly the year through about English
gardens and along the old hedge-rows, that is quite beyond the compass
of our bird's instrument.
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