Where Town and Country Meet 



North Atlantic seaboard that does not fre 

 quent my swamp and sing under my win 

 dow. I have identified nearly every bird 

 given in Dr. Coues's tables as proper to 

 this locality, including some of the rarer 

 wood birds, which I supposed never ven 

 tured so near the outposts of a large city. 

 But I have learned that even the shyest 

 birds will come into our parks and suburbs 

 if we entice them with the proper natural 

 conditions. A bit of real wildwood any 

 where will bring them, but it must be real 

 wildwood, untrimmed and untraversed by 

 orderly paths, left just as it was when na 

 ture abandoned it, in her hasty departure 

 to a more congenial dwelling, carelessly 

 overturned, with odds and ends scattered 

 everywhere. The birds do not care how 

 close to our houses they come, so long as 

 we leave them their natural coverts. But 

 there are conservatives among them, who 

 will not be bamboozled by man's so-called 

 improvements upon nature. You could not 

 get such birds to build their nests in a 

 shaved and tonsured park, unless you spread 

 a net over it and imprisoned them there. 

 Fortunately, nobody has thought it worth 

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