T90 JOTTINGS ABOUT BIRDS. 



Many birds that have been introduced into 

 pictures fairly puzzle the ornithologist as to their 

 identity. How many times have I heard the 

 question asked, " What birds are those ? " and what 

 widely divergent answers have been volunteered. 

 Now the unfortunate objects were Crows, anon 

 Swallows, and later still fancy had turned them 

 into Blackbirds ! Better far had such ornithological 

 travesties been omitted altogether. For the artist 

 there can be and is no excuse — he has it in his 

 power to give correctly, on however small a scale, 

 the birds he seeks to portray ; but to do so he 

 must study them as carefully as he would any other 

 natural objects. How often, for instance, do we 

 see the Waterhen {GaUinida chloropus) caricatured. 

 This bird is remarkably neat in its outline and 

 most graceful in its movements. These traits 

 should be preserved. Another fault which must 

 be noticed is the way in which an artist strives to 

 conceal his ignorance of the dermal covering of 

 birds, especially the smaller feathers of the wings 

 (greater, median, and lesser coverts, scapulars, 

 and innermost secondaries), by dauby clouds of 

 colour which portray nothing in particular, save 

 the painter's want of technical knowledge. 



It is rather an interesting fact, that the birds with 



