Bluebird of Happiness - Bluebirds in Europe

Bluebirds in Europe

The genuine bluebirds (Sialia) are found only in North America. The western Palearctic has only a few birds with conspicuous blue in the plumage, including the Blue Rock-Thrush (Monticola solitarius), the adult male of which is the only European passerine with all-blue plumage; this species is best known from its literary treatment by Giacomo Leopardi, whose poem Il passero solitario makes of the rock-thrush a figure of the poet's isolation. The Great Tit (Parus major) and the various blue tits of the genus (Cyanistes) aso have noticeable blue in their plumage.

In L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird) by Madame d'Aulnoy (1650–1705), King Charming is transformed into a blue bird, who aids his lover, the princess Fiordelisa, in her trials.

The Blue Bird provided the narrative material for a 1908 stage play by Maurice Maeterlinck, which in turn has been the source of several films, including the 1940 original starring Shirley Temple, Gale Sondergaard, Spring Byington and Nigel Bruce. Two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, are sent out by the fairy Bérylune (Jessie Ralph) to search for the Bluebird of Happiness. Returning home empty-handed, the children see that the bird has been in a cage in their house all along. When Myltyl makes of the bird a present to a sick neighbor (Angela), the bird flies away.

In Russian fairy tales, the blue bird is a symbol of hope. More recently, Anton Denikin has characterized the Ice March of the defeated Volunteer Army in the Russian Civil War as follows:

We went from the dark night of spiritual slavery to unknown wandering-in search of the bluebird.