84 THE LOG OF THE SUN 



cult it is to translate bird songs into human words. 

 Listen to the quick, double note coming from the 

 underbrush. Now he says "toivhee'!" the next 

 time " cliewinlc' ! " 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, corres- 

 pond 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 scientists, 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, motion- 

 less until some small insect flies in sight. Then 

 they will launch out into the air, and, catching 



