Figure 1 – Eastern Bluebird, Sudbury, MA, April 11, 2019. (c) DE Wolf 2019.

This was a morning of pure delight! The weather is finally turning warm. Yet the eastern bluebirds, Sialia sialis,  have persisted at my feeders, and they dazzle in the warm morning light. I so love the bluebirds best of all. It is both because they are difficult to attract and because of their splendid color. So today, I celebrate spring, and warmth, and bluebirds, with the photograph (Figure 1) of a male near my feeder. We are in Thoreau country here. He celebrated the bluebirds, the ancestors of these very birds. It was he who said that “the bluebird carries the sky on his back.” My bluebirds wintered here. Maybe it was colder in Thoreau’s time, because he wrote:

“The bluebird had come from the distant South
To his box in the poplar tree,
And he opened wide his slender mouth,
On purpose to sing to me.”

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens at 185 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/500 sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.