BIRDS. Ill 



A longer acquaintance with the birds will put us in a 

 position to identify them in a number of indirect ways, 

 by their nest and egg, their flight or voice. At first, 

 however, it is essential to note at a glance some such 

 slight peculiarity as those enumerated above. The im- 

 pressionist instinctively notes the yellow bill of the 

 blackbird, the bald forehead of the coot, the grey 

 collar of the jackdaw, the coloured proboscis of the 

 puffin ; nor, trifling as may appear these often ephemeral 

 characters, is the practice of taking note of them with, 

 or still better without, the binoculars, an unimportant 

 factor in the training of the eye to that rapid, unpre- 

 meditated, and accurate observation which, whether inborn 

 or acquired, is a part and parcel of the field naturalist. 



In all ways, then, birds are perhaps the wild creatures 

 that most repay study, nor is it a small matter that they 

 are the easiest of observation. Those who take the 

 trouble to observe them in nature are always finding 

 some new and hitherto unsuspected feature of their 

 lives. At one time, they note with interest the limits 

 to their instinct, which seems to have no inkling of 

 those late snows that, year after year, make April fools 

 of the old birds and corpses of the young. The sports- 

 man learns to distinguish between the solitary and the 

 gregarious; and the mutual advantages derived from 

 this sociability soon occur to him when he finds how 

 much harder are the latter to stalk, whether they mount 

 sentinels, as is sometimes their practice, or not. The 

 book-student, it is true, brackets the exquisite kingfisher 

 and the hideous lizard. The quadrate bone between 

 lower jaw and skull, the single condyle in the neck, 

 the oval blood - corpuscles, as well as the origin and 

 development of the two, all stamp them the "sauropsidan" 

 progeny of a common reptilian ancestor. And if the 

 bird-lover should recoil from thinking of his favourites 

 as feathered reptiles, let him give the library and dissect- 

 ing-room a wide berth, and wander in blissful ignorance 

 along the forest ridings or beside the stream. 



