Diana Culbertson, age 10, of Tuma, Iowa, for her question:

Are bluebirds really blue?

The bluebird is a summer visitor to the Great Plains. So you can find him in the parks in and around Des Joincs. It is a fair sized bird, six to eight inches long and he is a bomzt7. Yes, he is blue, or mostly blue. On the wing he looks like a fluttering blue flavor.

On closer inspection we sea that the bluebird has a chestnut brown breast, tipped with soft white. The pinion feathers of his blue wings are tipped with darker blue, almost black.

There are other blue birds around in the summer. But only the true bluebird weirs a chestnut colored vest with his blue jacket. Ho is classed as a thrush. His babies wear speckled vests like baby robins end other children of the thrush ftmiiy.