Our Bird Neighbors 



By cTheodore Roosevelt 



Sagamore Hill takes its name from the old Sagamore Mohannis, who, as 

 chief of his little tribe, signed away his rights to the land two centuries and a 

 half ago. The house stands right on the top of the hill, separated by fields and 

 belts of woodland from all other houses, and looks out over the bay and the 

 Sound. We see the sun go down beyond long reaches of land of water. 

 Many birds dwell in the trees round the house or in the pastures and the woods 

 near by, and of course in winter gulls, loons, and wild fowl frequent the waters 

 of the bay and the Sound. 



Most of the birds in our neighborhood are the ordinary home friends of 

 the house and the barn, the wood lot and the pasture ; but now and then the 

 species make queer shifts. The cheery quail, alas ! are rarely found near us now ; 

 and we no longer hear the whippoorwills at night. But some birds visit us now 

 which formerly did not. When I was a toy neither the black-throated green 

 warbler nor the purple finch nested around us. nor were bobolinks found in our 

 fields. The black-throated green w^arbler is now one of our commonest summer 

 warblers ; there are plenty of purple finches ; and, best of all, the bobolinks are 

 far from, infrequent. I had written about these new visitors to John Burroughs, 

 and once when he came out to see me I was able to show them to him. 



Around our West Virginia home many of the birds were different from 

 our Long Island friends. There were mocking birds, the most attractive of all 

 birds, and blue grosbeaks, and cardinals and summer redbirds instead of scarlet 

 tanagers, and those wonderful singers, the Bewick's wrens, and Carolina wrens. 



Like most Americans interested in birds and books, I know a good deal about 

 English birds as they appear in books. I know the lark of Shakespeare and 

 Shelley and the Ettrick Shepherd ; I know the nightingale of Milton and Keats ; 

 I know Wordsworth's cuckoo ; I know mavis and merle singing in the merry 

 green wood of the old ballads ; I know Jenny Wren and Cock Robin of the 

 nursery books. Therefore, I had always much desired to hear the birds in real 

 life; and the opportunity offered in June, 1910, when I spent two or three 

 weeks in England. As I could snatch but a few hours from a very exacting 

 round of pleasures and duties, it was necessary for me to be with some com- 

 panion who could identify both song and singer. In Sir Edward Grey, a keen 

 lover of outdoor life in all its phases, and a delightful companion, who knows 

 the songs and ways of English l)irils as very few do know them. I found the 

 best possible guide. 



We left London on the morning of June 9, twenty-four hours before I 

 sailed from Southampton. Getting oft' the train at Basingstoke, we drove to 

 the prcttv. smiling valley of the Ttchen. Here we tramped for three or four 

 hours, then again drove, this time t(i the edge of the New Forest, where wc first 



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