Displaying items by tag: thomas musselman

One man’s initial efforts led to the bluebird’s recovery

Eastern bluebirds have long been cherished.

Henry David Thoreau was this country’s first widely regarded and, perhaps, foremost nature writer. He rigorously kept a journal, recording the happenings around his home in Concord, Massachusetts. On April 26, 1838 he scribed a poem that began, “In the midst of the poplar that stands by our door, we planted a bluebird box, and we hoped before summer was o’er, a transient pair to coax.”

Thoreau ended the long entry with the lines, “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.”

It has now been 183 years since the master of Walden waxed poetic about Eastern bluebirds, but his words seem just as appropriate today as they were then because people still love the birds that “carry the sky on their backs” and a song in their hearts.