Blue bird
Quiet happiness — the small joy that does not need to announce itself.
A blue bird in a dream is the dictionary's image of quiet happiness. The colour blue itself carries calm; on a bird, the dream is pointing at a small kind of joy that has arrived without fanfare and is staying.
Folk tradition calls the bluebird the bird of happiness, and the dream uses that meaning gently. It is rarely a peak emotion; it is the steady, low-grade well-being that holds a life up.
Where you often see it. A small blue bird on a windowsill. A blue bird seen briefly in a hedge. The dream uses the blue bird for quiet happiness — the small joy that does not need to announce itself.
What it is not. A blue bird is not always cliché. The dictionary reads it as the small unobtrusive recognition of contentment.
Related in the dictionary. Read blue-bird with bird, the colour blue, robin, sparrow, and any scene of small visible happiness.