20 Introduction 



bird chorus in full voice; we loaf in sylvan byways, or linger 

 where the lush grass grows most luxuriantly by the water's 

 edge; perhaps we throw ourselves down in some June meadow 

 where the daisies lie like sheets of snow, or mayhap we pull 

 ourselves up some mountain side midst ferns and moss-covered 

 rocks; but we certainly avoid the museum until we have 

 caught at least a glimpse of the soul of ornithology. And it 

 has a soul, well-defined, clear, and distinct, but not until we 

 have felt it do we really know what it means to be abroad 

 with the birds. 



The average city-bred person is a savage in the bird world. 

 And as the savage would probably not exactly understand or 

 appreciate the complexities of a great chorus from one of 

 Mendelssohn's or Handel's oratorios, so he who goes forth 

 from the city for the first time to listen to and know the birds 

 is apt to be overwhelmed by their numbers and the variety of 

 their notes. The flash of orange and black through the 

 blossoms of the fruit orchard is dazzling; the zig-zag, ringing 

 tones in a nearby woodland thicket are startling and incompre- 

 hensible; so the bubbling song of the tiny bunch of feathers 

 that darts through the rushes along the river front. It needs 

 a tutor to point out that the minstrel in orange and black is 

 the Baltimore Oriole, a very common bird in Washington Park 

 and all the environs of Albany; that the bird with the 

 up-and-down song is the Golden-crowned Thrush, or Ovenbird, 

 and that the last, the bird along the river, is the Long-billed 

 Marsh Wren, both the latter being also abundant residents of 

 Albany County. 



In this book I have made the attempt, modestly, of course, 

 to act as a tutor in the field. Our glass is our only weapon, 



