In such situations the female is easily captured by approaching very stealthily and covering the entrance to the nest.  The bird seldom makes any effort to escape, seeing how hopeless the case is, and keeps her place on the nest till she feels your hand closing around her.  I have looked down into the cavity and seen the poor thing palpitating with fear and looking up with distended eyes, but never moving till I had withdrawn a few paces; then she rushes out with a cry that brings the male on the scene in a hurry.  He warbles and lifts his wings beseechingly, but shows no anger or disposition to scold and complain like most birds.  Indeed, this bird seems incapable of uttering a harsh note, or of doing a spiteful, ill-tempered thing.

The ground-builders all have some art or device to decoy one away from the nest, affecting lameness, a crippled wing, or a broken back, promising an easy capture if pursued.  The tree-builders depend upon concealing the nest or placing it beyond reach.  But the bluebird has no art either way, and its nest is easily found.

About the only enemies of the sitting bird or the nest is in danger of are snakes and squirrels.  I knew of a farm-boy who was in the habit of putting his hand down into a bluebird’s nest and taking out the old bird whenever he came that way.  One day he put his hand in, and, feeling something peculiar, withdrew it hastily, when it was instantly followed by the head of an enormous black snake.  The boy took to his heels and the snake gave chase, pressing him close till a plowman near by came to the rescue with his ox-whip.

There never was a happier or more devoted husband than the male bluebird is.  But among nearly all our familiar birds the serious cares of life seem to devolve almost entirely upon the female.  The male is hilarious and demonstrative, the female serious and anxious about her charge.  The male is the attendant of the female, following her wherever she goes.  He never leads, never directs, but only seconds and applauds.  If his life is all poetry and romance, hers is all business and prose.  She has no pleasure but her duty, and no duty but to look after her nest and brood.  She shows no affection for the male, no pleasure in his society; she only tolerates him as a necessary evil, and, if he is killed, goes in quest of another in the most business-like manner, as you would go for the plumber or the glazier.  In most cases the male is the ornamental partner in the firm, and contributes little of the working capital.  There seems to be more equality of the sexes among the woodpeckers, wrens, and swallows; while the contrast is greatest, perhaps, in the bobolink family, where the courting is done in the Arab fashion, the female fleeing with all her speed and the male pursuing with equal precipitation; and were it not for the broods of young birds that appear, it would be hard to believe that the intercourse ever ripened into anything more intimate.