Bluebirds!

 

We just saw some bluebirds darting around the cottage and two were already nesting in our one box. [Of course, I immediately said, "Honey, we need more boxes!" Fortunately our son Eli is becoming a fair bluebird box maker. But right now there are more pressing things.]

Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.

With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!

               ––Emily Dickinson

"His soft warble melts the ear, as the snow is melting in the valleys around. The bluebird comes and with his warbles drills the ice and sets from the rivers and ponds and frozen ground."                                                                                        ––Henry D. Thoreau, 1859

"Is there any sign of spring quite so welcome as the glint of the first bluebird unless it is his softly whistled song? No wonder the bird has become the symbol for happiness. Before the farmer begins to plough the wet earth, often while snow is still on the ground, this hardy little minstrel is making himself very much at home in our orchards and gardens while waiting for a mate to arrive from the South."

––Neltje Blanchan, Birds Worth Knowing, 1917