56 SHARP EYES. 



their names." There can be little doubt but the 

 young observer had seen a pair of red-polls, a bird 

 related to the goldfinch, and that occasionally comes 

 down to us in the winter from the far north. An- 

 other time, the same youth wrote that he had seen a 

 strange bird, the color of a sparrow, that alighted on 

 fences and buildings as well as upon the ground and 

 that walked. This last fact showed the youth's dis- 

 criminating eye and settled the case. I knew it to 

 be a species of lark, and from the size, color, season, 

 etc., the tit-lark. But how many persons would have 

 observed that the bird walked instead of hopped ? 



Some friends of mine who lived in the country 

 tried to describe to me a bird that built a nest in a 

 tree within a few feet of the house. As it was a 

 brown bird, I should have taken it for a wood-thrush, 

 had not the nest been described as so thin and loose 

 that from beneath the eggs could be distinctly seen. 

 The most pronounced feature in the description was 

 the barred appearance of the under side of the bird's 

 tail. I was quite at sea, until one day, when we 

 were driving out, a cuckoo flew across the road in 

 front of us, when my friends exclaimed, " There is 

 our bird!" I had never known a cuckoo to build 

 near a house, and I had never noted the appearance 

 the tail presents when viewed from beneath ; but if 

 the bird had been described in its most obvious 

 features, as slender, with a long tail, cinnamon brown 

 above and white beneath, with a curved bill, any one 

 who knew the bird would have recognized the por- 

 trait. 



