Part 5

One day our neighbor’s cat was hiding behind an evergreen near where Mrs. Bluebird was hunting grasses. Mr. Bluebird’s bright eyes saw her just in time.

“Dear-dear-dear!” he cried, quickly and jerkily.

Mrs. Bluebird knew that that meant, “Danger! Fly quick!!” Up she flew, and away.

The cat jumped high and almost caught her.

After that I chased the cat away every time I saw her. There certainly should be a law to make people keep their cats at home.

When Mrs. Bluebird had her house all furnished she stayed at home about two weeks and took a good rest. Mr. Bluebird continued to bring her meals and to entertain her. When he was not hunting bugs and worms, or chasing English sparrows, he was sure to be somewhere near home, singing his sweetest songs.

When Mrs. Bluebird was able to be out again she and Mr. Bluebird were busier than ever. Both were carrying food to the little house. I knew then that they had babies in there, so I called him Father, and her Mother.

The bluebirds caught some of their food in the air, but a good deal of it they picked up in my garden. I had some low stakes there expressly for them. They perched on these and on the bean-poles, and from there pounced on many a luckless worm or bug that their sharp eyes espied. I am sure the bluebirds are great helpers in a garden.

After two busy weeks of baby-tending, Father and Mother Bluebird did just what the little wrens had done. They made the babies come outside for their food, or go hungry.

I think the first little bird to leave a nest must be very courageous. The others usually follow close after him. It was so with these bluebirds. And as they came out, one after another, Mother coaxed them over to the thornapple bushes. She did it by calling, “Dear dear,” and flying back and forth between the little house and the bushes.

Some of the baby bluebirds were quite obedient and flew after the mother. Two liked it so well on a branch in front of their house that they stayed there a while; then flew to other branches in the same tree. Father looked after these, and Mother stayed with the other three. What a chatter they always made when food was brought to them! It seemed as if each one said: “Come to me! Come to me!”

While Father and Mother Bluebird had those babies to feed and to care for, they started another housekeeping. This time they moved into the pretty double house and took the lower story. In the second coming-out party there were four more little bluebirds.

All through this second housekeeping the English sparrows tried repeatedly to get into the upper story, and Father Bluebird had to spend much time chasing them away. In the one-story house he had that much more time to get food, or to sing.

I did not clean the bungalow house after their first nesting, because I did not want the bluebirds to nest in it again. After the double house was vacated, I cleaned both houses, and found that the bluebirds had used only grasses and a few feathers for their nesting. In each case they had covered the entire floor with grasses, but the cup-like nest was back against the rear wall, as far from the entrance as it could possibly be.

What could this mean but that the bluebird likes a house with depth so she can bed her young as far back from meddling paws as possible? This much I learned from examining the deserted bluebird nests.

V THE WRENS’ APARTMENT HOUSE

A four-room house which had been sent to me was very much liked by a pair of wrens. Again their lively, rippling notes filled the air, as these wrens went from room to room of this “apartment house,” as I called it. It was three days before they made up their minds which room they liked best.

Then they brought little twigs and bits of rag, and leaves, and other things, and poked them into one of the rooms. It was as good as saying, “We will take this apartment for the summer.”

Some English sparrows wanted that same room. We always shooed them away, of course, if we could without frightening the other birds. The wrens jabbered and hissed at the sparrows, and stayed, pecking them and being pecked by them. There were four sparrows and only the two wrens; so the poor little wrens finally gave up and went away.

But, try as they would, the sparrows could not get inside of the house. After a while, they, too, went away. Then the wrens returned. It seemed as if they had been watching for the chance.

The wrens soon fetched more twigs, some of them several inches long. They poked them in as far as they would go; then went inside and pulled them in as well as they could. But some of the longest ones remained partly outside and so blocked the entrance to any birds except the tiny wrens.

Again the English sparrows came and, although they couldn’t even get their heads in now, still they bothered the wrens. They couldn’t have that room themselves, and they didn’t want anybody else to have it.

With such a mean spirit is it any wonder that nobody likes these birds? I cannot bear to call them sparrows any more, because so many good birds go by that name, and are therefore in danger of being disliked. Or, I wish that all the good sparrows could have a different name, and let the English sparrow alone keep the name he has dishonored.

The boy has told me that, to keep English sparrows from increasing around his place, he destroys their eggs wherever he can find them. He said that one pair of sparrows seemed to blame the bluebirds for it, and in revenge destroyed the bluebirds’ nest.

We kept up the shooing and handclapping whenever English sparrows visited the wren house. After a while the wrens began to understand that we were trying to help them, and went on with their nesting. They put tiny sticks and twigs into other rooms of their house also,—and now there was a perfect concert of wren music all the time. Before night two more entrances were blocked. Some of the twigs that these wrens brought had such long thorns on them that they would not go inside at all. But this did not discourage the plucky wrens. They just dropped them to the ground and fetched others.

The next day another pair of wrens came. It seemed as if wrens had a way of letting their friends know where some nice apartments could be had. I was so eager to accommodate as many wrens as would come that I had made some one-room houses for them. One was mounted in a pear tree; another under the overhang of the garage roof.

This last wren pair seemed quite bewildered with so many houses to choose from, and all of them different. Whenever Mrs. Wren showed preference for one house, Mr. Wren would go to another one and with his singing try to coax her there. She was seen oftener about the house under the garage roof, than the others. Mr. Wren seemed to like the apartment house best. He was such a jolly little fellow, it is no wonder he liked to have company. But Mrs. Wren did not care for that at all. A small cottage was her choice. After making us believe that she liked the one under the garage roof, she came with a stick about three inches long and flitted about with it.

Mr. Wren had already put some nesting material into the apartment house. But hard as he tried, by singing and by soft chatter, which I suppose was coaxing, and by frequent visits to the apartment house, he could not win her over. Her mind was made up, and it must be—what? Well, it was the small house in the pear tree. When Mr. Wren saw that he couldn’t have his way, why, of course, that small house became his choice too.