WHEN one knows six birds by sight or sound, it has been said, he is lost.
After that he cannot rest until he knows fifty, or a hundred, or two
hundred--in his back-door yard, or down in the orchard, or across the farm.
It is not easy to explain wherein lies the fascination of "naming the birds
without a gun." The humility of the scoffer, caught unawares, and taught
his first six before he knows it, is something pathetic and instructive.
Few mortals are proof against the charm--when once the first half-dozen are
conquered. The first three come easy. Most of us know the Crow--and the
Robin--and the Bluebird--and--and--the Sparrow--until we discover that
there are more than a dozen varieties of Sparrow, and perceive that this
common brown bird, hopping so cheerily in and out of the bushes, may be a
Song Sparrow or a Chipping Sparrow or a White-Throated or White-Crowned or
any one of the dozen--or even the Cocky English Sparrow, despised by
ornithologist and tyro alike. When to the Crow and Robin and Bluebird one
has added the Blackbird--both the Keel-tailed and the Redwing--and the
Meadow Lark or the Highhole, the charm begins to work. Armed with
opera-glass and bird book, the victim casts convention to the winds. He
stands in the full glare of the public highway, his glass focused on an
invisible spot, an object of ridicule to men and dogs. He crawls on his
hands and knees through underbrush, under barbed fences and over stone
walls. He sits by the hour waiting for a Vireo to come down from the
topmost branch within range of his glass. He forgets luncheon and
engagements. And what does he bring home? Certainly not the river and sky,
and seldom even a feather.
Books on birds, continues the _Boston Evening Transcript_, like good wine,
need no bush at this season of the year; the Golden-winged Woodpecker drums
announcement on every limb; the Redwing Blackbird gurgles and chuckles and
calls across the swamp; and the Lesser Sparrows and Bluebirds and Robins
wake the morning to the weaving of new song. The hand reaches out for the
familiar bird-book; that last note was a strange one. It is a new bird--or
merely one forgotten? The delight begins all over with the first Bluebird's
call, "a mere wandering voice in the air."
"The Department of Agriculture," Miss Merriam tells us, in her new book,
"Birds of Village and Field," "realizing the losses that often result from
the ignorant sacrifice of useful birds, constituted the Division of
Ornithology, now a part of the Biological Survey, a court of appeal where
accusations against the birds could be received and investigated. The
method used by the division is the final one--the examination of stomach
contents to prove the actual food of the birds. After the examination of
about eighty birds, the only one actually condemned to death is the English
Sparrow. Of all the accused Hawks, only three have been found guilty of the
charges made against them--the Goshawk, Cooper's, and the
Sharp-Shinned--while the rest are numbered among the best friends of the
fruit-grower and farmer."
[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICAN RHEA.]
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