The Bluebird of Happiness

A cloudy morning. As I worked my way from the foot of our neighbor's dock across the edge of creek and pond, I started to hear the beautiful quavery call of an Eastern Bluebird.

What an illusion, I thought. Funny how the Tufted Titmouse sometimes manages a quavery call that can sound like a Bluebird. I could even hear the chick-a-dee-like call of the Titmouse. Except that the chick-a-dee caller wasn't a Titmouse at all but an actual Black-capped Chick-a-dee. It was part of a small feeding flock that also included a female-type Pine Warbler, just barely tinted with yellow on its cap and breast, stout bill, longish tail and the giveaway wing bars -- but otherwise as plain as a warbler can be. And the quavery call that continued to echo down from above.

Looking up, I could see a silhouette of the calling bird on the tip-top of a dead pine. This was no titmouse. It was indeed an Eastern Bluebird, the first I have ever seen on the place! The calls continued for a while as the bird moved from post to pillar to post as if it were leading its little flock which eventually disappeared to the north.

I must say I never expected to see a bluebird here.

Eastern Bluebird is the State Bird of New York but I daresay that most New Yorkers have never seen one. It is, however, not uncommon on Long Island if you know where to look. In our area, I have seen them recently at SOFO off the Bridgehampton/Sag Harbor Turnpike, at Gabreski Airport in Westhampton and at EPCAL in Calverton; they can also be found further east, generally in nest boxes. But Bluebirds feed on the ground and they like edge areas between grassland meadows and woods, a habitat that we really don't have here. So this Bluebird of Happiness was a welcome surprise, the 240th species on the property!

Eric Salzman