Thinking Citizen Blog — The Eastern Bluebird — Harbinger Of Spring, Symbol Of Joy, Love, Happiness, Renewal
Thinking Citizen Blog — Wednesday is Climate Change, the Environment, and Sustainability Day
Today’s Topic: the Eastern Bluebird — harbinger of spring, symbol of joy, love, happiness, renewal
What is your favorite first sign of spring? Is it the crocus? the song of the blackcap chickadee?
Today, the eastern bluebird. Not to be confused with the blue jay and the nuthatch (see photos below).
But first a brief re-cap. Last time (3/5) an examination of the canopy layers of temperate and tropical forests (and the Japanese tradition of “forests on top of forests”). Two weeks (2/26) Reindeer — populations, migrations, antlers, and astonishing vision. Three weeks ago (2/19), the challenge of coming up with the three most important images that you would use in a presentation to a 5th grade class on climate change. So did you think about it? What three did you come up with? The thread connecting my three was the importance of having the longest and broadest possible perspective. Four weeks ago (2/12), the accountability of public officials for the recent destructive fires in California. Five weeks ago (2/5) a whimsical exploration of the miracle that dinosaurs really once roamed the earth. Before that a three-part series on the mysterious creature called the owl.
General rule: the more you appreciate the wonders of the natural world the better. Please share the coolest fact about nature you have learned recently that the rest of us may be unaware of.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
IS THERE A CUTER BIRD THAN THE BLUEBIRD? FOR MANY CULTURES IT IS A SYMBOL OF HAPPINESS, JOY, LOVE, SPRING, RENEWAL
1. Male bluebirds have a bright blue head and back, while the front is red-brown and white. Almost red-white-and-blue.
2. “Bluebirds typically sit in the open on power lines or along fences, with an alert, vertical posture.”
3. “When they drop to the ground after an insect, they make a show of it, with fluttering wings and a fairly slow approach, followed by a swift return to the perch.”
NB: “The male Eastern Bluebird displays at his nest cavity to attract a female. He brings nest material to the hole, goes in and out, and waves his wings while perched above it. That is pretty much his contribution to nest building; only the female Eastern Bluebird builds the nests and incubates the eggs.”
BLUEBIRDS DO NOT BUILD THEIR OWN NEST — THEY ARE “SECONDARY CAVITY NESTERS” — fans make it easy by providing blue bird boxes
1. “Some females may be rather subdued in coloration, to the point where their backs are blue-gray and their breasts only faintly rusty, but the pattern of coloration remains the same.”
2. Don’t confuse with blue jays (below). “Bluebirds are smaller than Blue Jays, and they lack the pointed crests, the black collars, and extensive white on the wings and tail that Blue Jays show.”
THE RANGE: FROM CANADA TO NICARAGUA — some migrate, some don’t; some short distances others as long as 2,000 miles;
1. Bluebirds fly in flocks up to a few hundred. They can fly fast too — up to 45 miles an hour
2. They often harass, chase, and attack the smaller nuthatch which is similar in coloration (see below).
3. They sometimes force the nuthatch out of its nest.
SONGS FEATURING BLUEBIRDS — Jan Peerce (1945), “Bluebird of Happiness,” Judy Garland, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (1939), “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah” (1946)
1. “Bluebird of Happiness” (links 10 and 11 below) featuring Opera star Jan Peerce. “The 1945 recording became a worldwide hit for Peerce, outselling all his many operatic recordings, and becoming second only to Enrico Caruso’s 1918 recording of George M. Cohan’s “Over There” among the best-selling RCA Victor records made by opera and concert singers.”
2. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (1939) — last two stanzas: “Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly, birds fly over the rainbow, why, then, oh, why can’t I? If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?”
3. “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah” (1946) includes the line “Mr. Bluebird is on my shoulder” and “Where is that bluebird.”
The song was the second time Disney won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.”
NB: A popular cafe and musical venue just outside of Nashville, Tennessee is the Bluebird Cafe.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Bluebird/overview
https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/eastern-bluebird
https://www.massaudubon.org/nature-wildlife/birds/eastern-bluebirds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird_of_happiness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird
https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/eastern-bluebird
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verditer_flycatcher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuthatch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird_of_Happiness_(song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IERLMXtMZag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird_Caf%C3%A9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_the_Rainbow
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
A LINK TO THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENT BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to climate change or the environment.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to climate change that the rest of us may have missed. Your favorite chart or table perhaps…
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart.
