I wonder if you have ever heard
Of the queer, little, dismal Whiney-bird,
As black as a crow, as glum as an owl--
A most peculiar kind of a fowl?
He is oftenest seen on rainy days,
When children are barred from outdoor plays;
When the weather is bright and the warm sun shines,
Then he flies far away to the gloomy pines,
Dreary-looking, indeed, is his old black cloak,
And his whiney cry makes the whole house blue--
"There's nothing to do-oo! there's nothing to do-oo!"
Did you ever meet this doleful bird?
He's found where the children are, I've heard,
Now, who can he be? It can't be you.
But who is the Whiney-bird? Who-oo? Who-oo?

--_Jean Halifax in St. Nicholas._

THE BLUEBIRD.

BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT.

The National Association of Audubon Societies Educational Leaflet No.
24.

Who dares write of the Bluebird, thinking to add a fresher tint to his
plumage, a new tone to his melodious voice, or a word of praise to his
gentle life, that is as much a part of our human heritage and blended
with our memories as any other attribute of home?

Not I, surely, for I know him too well and each year feel myself more
spellbound and mute by the memories he awakens. Yet I would repeat his
brief biography, lest there be any who, being absorbed by living
inward, have not yet looked outward and upward to this poet of the sky
and earth and the fullness and goodness thereof.

[Sidenote: The Bluebird's Country.]

For the Bluebird was the first of all poets,--even before man had
blazed a trail in the wilderness or set up the sign of his habitation
and tamed his thoughts to wear harness and travel to measure. And so he
came to inherit the earth before man, and this, our country, is all The
Bluebird's County, for at some time of the year he roves about it from
the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Mexico to Nova Scotia, though
westward, after he passes the range of the Rocky Mountains, he wears a
different dress and bears other longer names.

[Sidenote: The Bluebird's Travels.]

In spite of the fact that our eastern Bluebird is a home-body, loving
his nesting haunt and returning to it year after year, he is an
adventurous traveler. Ranging all over the eastern United States at
some time in the season, this bird has its nesting haunts at the very
edge of the Gulf States and upward, as far north as Manitoba and Nova
Scotia.

When the breeding season is over, th