Editorial 



259 



A Bi-Monthly Magazine 

 Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Contributins Editor. MABELOSGOOD WRIGHT 



Published by D. APPLETON & CO. 



Vol. XXIII Published October 1, 1921 No. 5 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 



Price in the United States, one dollar and fifty cents a year; 

 outside the United States, one dollar and seventy-five cents, 

 postage paid. 



COPYRIGHTED, I9al. BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Bird-Lore's Motto. 

 A Bird in the Bush Is Worth Two in the Hand 



It is impossible to conceive of a person 

 possessed of normal sensibilities to whom the 

 living bird does not appeal. The most primi- 

 tive, as well as the most highly developed 

 representatives of the human race have, in 

 varjdng degrees, an inherent interest in bird- 

 life. This is the common, universal heritage 

 of mankind. But, occasionally, there are 

 individuals for whom birds possess so strong 

 a fascination that they become, beyond com- 

 parison, the most eloquent expression of ani- 

 mate Nature. Doubtless many of the for- 

 tunate possessors of this rare gift have, with 

 Dr. Swope, asked themselves why it is that 

 birds are possessed of such significance for 

 them; have attempted, introspectively, to 

 analyze their keen, sympathetic response to 

 the sight of a bird or the sound of its voice. 



It is not the grace of motion, beauty of 

 plumage or musical ability of birds which 

 alone explains their hold on us, but a com- 

 bination of all these plus a certain ethereal 

 independence which makes the bird an ap- 

 parently immortal expression of every hour 

 of the day and night, every season of the year, 

 every aspect of the material world. 



Your true bird-lover may not be an orni- 

 thologist in the scientific sense, but he must 

 be a nature-lover, for whom, in an infinite 

 variety of ways, birds will give form to 

 emotions born of a temperamental response 

 to the manifold beauties of the world as he 

 sees it. 



Pamela Tennant, writing of an English 

 sunrise, confesses herself unable to clothe her 

 feelings in words and with the line 



"For what I cannot say is in that Thrush's 

 song," 



caves the task to the Song Thrush. 



Burroughs, at sunset, listening to the hymn 

 of the Hermit Thrush, experiences a "serene 

 exaltation of sentiment of which music, 

 literature, and religion are but the faint 

 types and symbols." 

 Whitman's lines to the Man-of-War Bird, 



"Thou born to match the gale (thou art all 



wings) , 

 To cope with heaven and earth and sea 



and hurricane, 

 Thou ship of air that never furlst thy sails, 

 Days, even weeks, untired and onward, 



through spaces, realms gyrating," 



proclaim the birds' mastery of the air. 



A wedge of Geese crossing the sky in March 

 is not so much a flock of birds as the visible 

 spirit of returning spring. So we might con- 

 tinue to name bird after bird — Eagle, Owl, 

 Raven, or Wren — and find that each in its 

 widely differing way symbolized or expressed 

 that "Sense sublime of something far more 

 deeply interfused" of which Wordsworth 

 writes. 



But separate the bird from its true en- 

 vironment and the spell is broken. What is 

 more painful than the song of a caged Night- 

 ingale. The Wild Goose in captivity is a 

 mere waddling fowl. So we see that the 

 bird's freedom is an essential part of its 

 charm. Emerson understood this when 

 he wrote: 



"I thought the sparrow's note from heaven. 

 Singing at dawn on the alder bough; 



I brought him home, in his nest at even, 

 He sings the song, but it cheers not now: 



For I did not bring home the river and 

 sk}'." 



This is the crucial test, proving, as Dr. 

 Swope says, that it is primarily the freedom 

 of bird-life which appeals to us and to which, 

 in endless ways, the bird within us responds. 



It goes without saying that the extent of 

 the average person's interest in birds is 

 dependent upon the opportunity that he has 

 for becoming familiar with them, but to 

 what degree the development of an inherent 

 afl&nity for bird-life is related to the en- 

 vironment of the possessor of this heritage, 

 is a question we may discuss on anothe'* 

 occasion. 



