It’s a thrill and honor to be in one room with so many bluebirders! My name is Ruth Beasley, and I write a little thing called “Learning the Birds.” As the name implies, I don’t pretend to be an expert. Having only recently begun my study of birds, I have the fervor of the newly converted, but I have no credentials worth mentioning.
     I do inhabit a specific niche, a microhabitat, if you will, in that I preach largely to the unconverted. My audience tends to be those people who are bird people, deep down, but who haven’t quite acted on the urge yet.
     If we can only hold their interest, well, surely interest can lead to things like involvement, action, and even conservation.
     One doesn’t have to be an expert to love the bluebirds. They have long occupied our continent and our history, they grace our analogies, and inhabit our fondest dreams. Long before the white man came, the red man honored the blue birds. Pima legend has the bluebird bathing in a magic lake to get its color, while Longfellow’s bluebird piped in thicket and meadow. Blue is the color of the North, or the East, depending on the legend, and it has long been associated with serenity and creative expression. And happiness, of course!
     The colonists that landed at Plymouth Rock were notably fond of the bluebirds they found, and called them “blue robins.” My oldest bird book, a Birds of America published in 1936, calls them simply American Bluebirds.
     Red, White, & Bluebirds is an accurate description as well an a clever allusion to several famous flags, Old Glory and the Lone Star Flag among them. But in welcoming our NABS neighbors to the north and south, I’ve been thinking about their flags, too, and trying to make the slogan fit.
     For the Canadian flag, we simply imagine the red & white maple-leaf with a bluebird flying right in front of  it — and you get red, white, & blue. Mexico is a bit trickier —  there’s some green, for one thing, but green is said to mean hope, a hope we share for the future of our continental red, white, and bluebirds, so that’s OK. There is also an eagle on a cactus holding a serpent, and perhaps room for a small imaginary bluebird there, as well.
     There are several different birds that could fit our slogan. Kingfishers wear a blue-gray bathing costume with red and white stripes. In certain lights, the black in a Red-headed Woodpecker can appear to be blue, which accounts for several antiquated nicknames including (speaking of flags) Flag Bird, Tricolor, and the Patriotic Bird. Another bird in tricolor is the Harlequin Duck, at least the male is, when in breeding season.
     All these birds could well fly under our banner, but the only true blue birds that live up to the name are the Eastern and Western Bluebirds — with feathers of genuine blue, accessorized in red and white.
     Except for the fact that blue feathers are not really blue, but that’s an entirely different conversation. The bluebirds in question do have feather hues of three different types: the red ones are drenched in actual pigment, the white feathers reflect light; and the blue ones refract it. So, we could say drenched, reflective, and refracted — but red, white, & blue is clearly better.
     The blue we perceive in a bluebird is not American-flag-blue, or even Lone-Star-flag-blue. Spine-tingling blue is how I’d describe it, but indigo, cerulean, turquoise, campanula, and cobalt also work.
     Come to think of it, the red in a bluebird is not flag-red, either, but closer to brick or rust.  In Bird World, nothing is ever simple. White, however, is still white, so an accurate description of our tricolored bluebirds would  be something like brick, bleached, and campanula.
     No matter how you say it, color helps galvanize us into action, for we are naturally moved by beauty.
     And yet the more I learn about bluebird trails, the more I think of Johnny Appleseed. Trails and orchards both brought into being by conservative initiative. It doesn’t take an expert to see that this proud spirit is kept alive by bluebirders like yourselves.