4 SHARP EYES. 



Whenever you have learned to discriminate the birds, 

 or the plants, or the geological features of a country, 

 it is as if new and keener eyes were added. 



Of course one must not only see sharply, but read 

 aright what he sees. The facts in the life of Nature 

 that are transpiring about us are like written words 

 that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or 

 the writing is in cipher and he must furnish the key, 

 A female oriole was one day observed very much pra 

 occupied under a shed where the refuse from the horse 

 stable was thrown. She hopped about among the barn 

 fowls, scolding them sharply when they came too near 

 her. The stable, dark and cavernous, was just be- 

 yond. The bird, not finding what she wanted outside, 

 boldly ventured into the stable, and was presently cap- 

 tured by the farmer. What did she want ? was the 

 query. What, but a horsehair for her nest which was 

 in an apple-tree near by ; and she was so bent on hav- 

 ing one that I have no doubt she would have tweaked 

 one out of the horse's tail had he been in the stable. 

 Later in the season I examined her nest and found it 

 sewed through and through with several long horse- 

 hairs, so that the bird persisted in her search till the 

 hair was found. 



Little dramas and tragedies and comedies, little 

 characteristic scenes, are always being enacted in the 

 lives of the birds, if our eyes are sharp enough to see 

 them. Some clever observer saw this little comedy 

 played among some English sparrows and wrote an 

 account of it in his newspaper ; it is too good not to 

 be true : A male bird brought to his box a large, fine 

 goose feather, which is a great find for a sparrow and 

 much coveted. After he had deposited his prize and 

 chattered his gratuiations over it he went away ifi 



