Song Birds and Water Fowl 
tion, of this clearly defined branch of the sub- 
ject, will prevent, except in individual cases, 
such extensive acquaintance as one may have 
with land birds, yet the occasional species which 
even the most casual observer, or the most un- 
favorably situated student, will now and then 
come across, or of which he will read, are 
surely invested with a new interest by being 
brought into systematic relation with the full 
and magnificent scheme of the world’s avi- 
fauna; while the general reader, whose knowl- 
edge of the water fowl is about as great as that 
of the land birds—seeing that he knows almost 
nothing of either—will find the former quite 
as entertaining, in many respects, as the lat- 
ter. 
Let me preface this general view of water 
fowl by saying that, as compared with land 
birds, they are just as distinctive in their traits 
as in their habitat. Human nature is such 
that the difficulty of getting a thing makes us 
particularly desire to have it ; so that it is not 
one of the least attractive aspects of water fowl 
that, whereas land birds, as a group, come to 
us, we ourselves must, as a rule, go to the 
water birds. Their haunts are not, even in 
their migration, along the roadside, in fields 
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