336 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS 



be compared with human grief, they are quite as 

 proportionate to the length of the bird's life as is 

 the year of the average widower to his allotted 

 seventy. Compare a crow with a raven, a finch 

 witli a warbler, a wren with a sparrow, if you 

 will, but to compare a bird's life with a man's is 

 folly. This is very frequently done from the fact 

 that birds are building homes and caring for their 

 young. These processes arc very similar with 

 bird, beast, and human. 



That a young bird, returning from its first mi- 

 gration, should know what location to select and 

 of what material to build its nest is no more re- 

 markable than that it should know when to mi- 

 grate, what to feed its young, and when to leave 

 us again. It must be conceded by any field worker 

 of experience, however, that few young hens in 

 their first migration build as compact and perfect 

 specimens of architecture for a bird of their species, 

 as old birds that have built for several seasons. 

 This I know: the songs of yearling males are never 

 so mellow, so high, so clear, so trilled and thrilled, 

 so varied and original as those of birds, the feet, 

 beak, and plumage of which indicate age. It is an 

 incontrovertible instance of "practice makes per- 

 fect." 



The sane thing to do is to admit that the birds 

 arc guided by an influence, of which we obtain 

 hints and glimpses but do not fully understand; 

 and whether it is called by the name of "in- 



