Bird Neighbors | Page 4

be getting their knowledge
too easily; that what I and any one else told them they would be very apt to forget, but
that the things they found out themselves they would always remember. We must in a
way earn what we have or keep. Only thus does it become ours, a real part of us.
Not very long afterward I had the pleasure of walking with one of the ladies, and I found
her eye and ear quite as sharp as my own, and that she was in a fair way to conquer the
bird kingdom without any outside help. She said that the groves and fields, through which
she used to walk with only a languid interest, were now completely transformed to her
and afforded her the keenest pleasure; a whole new world of interest had been disclosed
to her; she felt as if she was constantly on the eve of some new discovery; the next turn in
the path might reveal to her a new warbler or a new vireo. I remember the thrill she
seemed to experience when I called her attention to a purple finch singing in the tree-tops
in front of her house, a rare visitant she had not before heard. The thrill would of course
have been greater had she identified the bird without my aid. One would rather bag one's
own game, whether it be with a bullet or an eyebeam.
The experience of this lady is the experience of all in whom is kindled this bird
enthusiasm. A new interest is added to life; one more resource against ennui and
stagnation. If you have only a city yard with a few sickly trees in it, you will find great
delight in noting the numerous stragglers from the great army of spring and autumn
migrants that find their way there. If you live in the country, it is as if new eyes and new
ears were given you, with a correspondingly increased capacity for rural enjoyment.
The birds link themselves to your memory of seasons and places, so that A song, a call, a
gleam of color, set going a sequence of delightful reminiscences in your mind. When a
solitary great Carolina wren came one August day and took up its abode near me and
sang and called and warbled as I had heard it long before on the Potomac, how it brought
the old days, the old scenes back again, and made me for the moment younger by all
those years!
A few seasons ago I feared the tribe of bluebirds were on the verge of extinction from the
enormous number of them that perished from cold and hunger in the South in the winter
of '94. For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something
kindred and precious from my environment -- the visible embodiment of the tender sky
and the wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to the coming generations of dwellers in the
country -- no bluebird in the spring! What will the farm-boy date from? But the fear was
groundless: the birds are regaining their lost ground; broods of young blue-coats are
again seen drifting from stake to stake or from mullen-stalk to mullen-stalk about the
fields in summer, and our April air will doubtless again be warmed and thrilled by this
lovely harbinger of spring. -- JOHN BURROUGHS, August 19, 1897
PREFACE
Not to have so much as a bowing acquaintance with the birds that nest in our gardens or
under the very eaves of our houses; that haunt our wood-piles; keep our fruit-trees free
from slugs; waken us with their songs, and enliven our walks along the roadside and
through the woods, seems to be, at least, a breach of etiquette toward some of our most
kindly disposed neighbors.
Birds of prey, game and water birds are not included in the book. The following pages are
intended to be nothing more than a familiar introduction to the birds that live near us.

Even in the principal park of a great city like New York, a bird-lover has found more than
one hundred and thirty species; as many, probably, as could be discovered in the same
sized territory anywhere.
The plan of the book is not a scientific one, if the term scientific is understood to mean
technical and anatomical. The purpose of the writer is to give, in a popular and accessible
form, knowledge which is accurate and reliable about the life of our common birds. This
knowledge has not been collected from the stuffed carcasses of birds in museums, but
gleaned afield. In a word, these short narrative descriptions treat of the bird's
characteristics of size, color, and flight; its peculiarities of instinct and temperament; its
nest