With the bluebirds the male is useful as well as ornamental.  He is the gay champion and escort of the female at all times, and while she is sitting he feeds her regularly.  It is very pretty to watch them building their nest.  The male is very active in hunting out a place and exploring the boxes and cavities, but seems to have no choice in the matter and is anxious only to please and to encourage his mate, who has the practical turn and knows what will do and what will not.  After she has suited herself he applauds her immensely, and away the two go in quest of material for the nest, the male acting as guard and flying above and in advance of the female.  She brings all the material and does all the work of building, he looking on and encouraging her with gesture and song.  He acts also as inspector of her work, but I fear is a very partial one.  She enters the nest with her bit of dry grass or straw, and, having adjusted it to her notion, withdraws and waits near by while he goes in and looks it over.  On coming out he exclaims very plainly, “Excellent!  Excellent!” and away the two go again for more material.

The bluebirds, when they build about the farm buildings, sometimes come into contact with the swallows.  The past season I knew a pair to take forcible possession of the domicile of a pair of the latter,—­the cliff species that now stick their nests under the eaves of the barn.  The bluebirds had been broken up in a little bird-house near by, by the rats or perhaps a weasel, and being no doubt in a bad humor, and the season being well advanced, they made forcible entrance into the adobe tenement of their neighbors, and held possession of it for some days, but I believe finally withdrew, rather than live amid such a squeaky, noisy colony.  I have heard that these swallows, when ejected from their homes in that way by the phoebe-bird, have been known to fall to and mason up the entrance to the nest while their enemy was inside of it, thus having a revenge as complete and cruel as anything in human annals.

The bluebirds and the house wrens more frequently come into collision.  A few years ago I put up a little bird-house in the back end of my garden for the accommodation of the wrens, and every season a pair of bluebirds looked into the tenement and lingered about several days, leading me to hope that they would conclude to occupy it.  But they finally went away, and later in the season the wrens appeared, and, after a little coquetting, were regularly installed in their old quarters, and were as happy as only wrens can be.

One of our younger poets, Myron Benton, saw a little bird

        “Ruffled with whirlwind of his ecstasies,”