PREFACE 



ideas in their works? For the beginner to learn 

 avian identification is at present hopelessly 

 complicated and unnecessarily discouraging, be- 

 cause of the requirement to wade, ignorantly, 

 thru a heterogeneous mass of terms and descrip- 

 tions, or to go bird-hunting without the remotest 

 idea of what he may expect to find most common 

 or most easily identifiable in the special locality 

 in which he searches. 



This, then, is my aim: to write a few words 

 which I hope may be of use both to him who 

 wishes to know and appreciate thru knowledge a 

 few of our abundant species and to him who 

 wishes to go thru my book and to advance, not 

 to skeletal or highly scientific work but to a good 

 acquaintance with all the birds of our locality 

 and their habits. 



Necessarily, this type of book is not, by its 

 very nature, equally adaptable to all localities; 

 and yet, altho I have written it with New York 

 City as a center and to be used chiefly for 

 neighboring regions, in many cases it will suffice, 

 at least partly, for other localities. This book 

 is not a reference work but is intended to be 

 followed more as a course than as a text-book. 



There are several books in addition to the 

 present volume which it would be well to have 

 at the start, among them one containing good 

 colored plates of our common birds. If you 

 have a book of this type already, so much the 

 better. If not, I can suggest no work better 

 than Reed's Birds East of the Rockies (pocket 

 edition). For information aural rather than 

 vi 



