Editorial 



237 



iltrti ilore 



A Bi-monthly Magazine 

 Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL ORC.AN OF THE Al'DUUON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Contributing Editor, MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Published by D. APPLETON & CO. 



Vol. XIV Published August 1. 1912 No. 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 



Price in the United States. Cinada and Mexico, twenty 1 



a Dumbe: 



COPTRIGH1 HD 



FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Bird Lore's Motto: 

 A Bird in the Bush Is Worth Two in the Hand 



We trust that Mr. Frederic H. Kennard's 

 'List of Trees, Shrubs, Vines, and Her- 

 baceous Plants Native to New England, 

 Bearing Fruit or Seeds Attractive to Birds,' 

 which appears in this issue of Bird-Lore, 

 will itself bear fruit by inducing hundreds 

 of Bird-Lore readers to make practical 

 use of the information it contains. Many 

 of the plants listed can be secured from 

 nurserymen, or specimens which might 

 never mature in nature may be trans- 

 planted from the woods or fields to our 

 lawns and parks. But few of them are 

 without beauty of their own, and when 

 they are both beautiful and useful they 

 have a double claim to our interest. 



The fact that Mr. Kennard's paper 

 originated in the plan of the Meriden 

 Bird Club, to make a piece of land which 

 it had acquired additionally attractive to 

 birds, is only one of numerous reasons 

 why we particularly call the attention of 

 all bird students to the first report of 

 this club, which is briefly noticed on a 

 preceding page. How the birds of Meri- 

 den have been accorded their true stand- 

 ing as citizens of the village is therein 

 recorded in a manner which must con- 

 vince one that in organizing this club 

 many of the problems of bird conservation 

 have been successfully answered. 



The Editor continues to receive an 

 increasingly large number of records of 

 the occurrence of birds far beyond the 

 limits of their known ranges. Usually 



onl_\- a single individual is observed, but 

 not infrequently several are rei)orted, and 

 in one instance, in an Atlantic Coast state, 

 an abundant eastern species was said to 

 have been largely replaced by a Pacific 

 Coast bird! In some cases, the attending 

 circumstances make the observation obvi- 

 ously authentic and worthy of record; 

 in others, they quite as obviously betray 

 the observer's failure to realize the require- 

 ments on which accurate field identifi- 

 cation must rest. Some descriptions are 

 ludicrously inaccurate, even when recog- 

 nizable; while others give details of color, 

 size, and form such as belong to no known 

 bird, and in comparing them with the 

 descriptions of skilled observers, one 

 realizes how greatly true bird study tends 

 to develop accuracy in observation. 



We have, however, known professionals 

 to mistake a male Cowbird for a Blue 

 Grosbeak, a male English Sparrow for a 

 Black-throated Bunting, and even a 

 Myrtle Warbler for a Nonpareil or Paint- 

 ing Bunting, a presumably impossible 

 error; while a "Glaucous Gull" identified 

 at a range of "ten feet" proved to be a 

 Herring Gull which had lost the black 

 tips to its primaries by trimming! 



The trained ear detects the presence 

 of species the eye may not discover, but 

 even with the commonest birds one cannot 

 use too great caution here. We recall how 

 one of the keenest of American field 

 ornithologists identified a Catbird, by 

 its voice, as a White-eyed Vireo, and we 

 even know of a case in which a Whip- 

 poor-will proved to be — a lady! 



An instructive indication of the grow- 

 ing popularity of birds with the com- 

 munity at large is supplied by the proprie- 

 tors of a certain brand of chewing-gum 

 whose advertisement assures purchasers 

 of their wares that they will find a colored 

 picture-card of an American bird in every 

 package, while fifty such pictures may 

 be redeemed for a book on birds containing 

 colored figures of fifty different birds! 

 Verily the ornithological millenium is 

 approaching when we absorb bird-lore 

 with chewing-gum! 



