A Book on Birds 



all of whom may be searched out and 

 identified one by one to your delight, from 

 the day you first see him. 



Therefore, now, if ever, sally forth upon 

 your questing. For just now the home 

 birds that await you — increased by new 

 arrivals every day — will be found in com- 

 pany almost everywhere with the migrants, 

 these displaying many exquisite charms of 

 briUiant plumage and voice that even the 

 others we love so well do not possess. 



It is true, indeed, that some few of the 

 transient visitors reach us much earlier 

 than the Thrasher and have already pro- 

 ceeded northward. Among this number 

 is the Fox Sparrow — a bird every lover of 

 birds should know. He is quite the largest 

 of the nine different members of his clan 

 with whom I am familiar, and he is pretty 

 certain to reveal himself, before your eyes 

 detect him, by his ever-recurring and 

 wonderfully bright and warbling note, which 

 has a gentle tremolo in it, put there possibly 

 by the impulse of his short, quick, restless 

 flights from Umb to limb. 



[60] 



