88 Spring Songsters [FIRST WEEK 



how difficult it is to translate bird songs into human words. 

 Listen to the quick, double note coming from the under- 

 brush. Now he says " towhee'! " the next time " che- 

 wink'l " You may change about at will, and the notes 

 will always correspond. Whatever is in our mind at the 

 instant, that will seem to be what the bird says. This 

 should warn us of the danger of reading our thoughts and 

 theories too much into the minds and actions of birds. 

 Their mental processes, in many ways, correspond to ours. 

 When a bird expresses fear, hate, bravery, pain or pleasure, 

 we can sympathise thoroughly with it, but in studying 

 their more complex actions we should endeavour to exclude 

 the thousand and one human attributes with which we 

 are prone to colour the bird's mental environment. 



John Burroughs has rendered the song of the black- 

 throated green warbler in an inimitable way, as follows: 



" V ! " When we have once heard the bird 



we will instantly recognise the aptness of these symbolic 

 lines. The least flycatcher, called minimus by the scien- 

 tists, well deserves his name, for of all those members of 

 his family which make their home with us, he is the smallest. 

 These miniature flycatchers have a way of hunting which 

 is all their own. They sit perched on some exposed twig 

 or branch, motionless until some small insect flies in sight. 

 Then they will launch out into the air, and, catching the 

 insect with a snap of their beaks, fly back to the same 

 perch. They are garbed in subdued grays, olives, and 

 yellows. The least flycatcher has another name which at 

 once distinguishes him chebec'. As he sits on a limb, 

 his whole body trembles when he jerks out these syllables, 



