Fifty Common Birds. 



109 



most obvious differences in size, color and 

 sound, the interesting part of your work 

 begins. 



You will soon learn to associate special 

 birds with certain localities, and once know- 

 ing their favorite haunts, you find other 

 clues to their habits; and before long they 

 stand out before you as distinctly as indi- 

 viduals. By going among the birds, watch- 

 ing them closely, comparing them care- 

 fully, and writing down all the peculiarities 

 of every new bird seen while you are in 

 the field, locality, song, size, color, details 

 of markings, food, flight, eggs, nest and 

 habits, you soon come, naturally and easily, 

 to know the birds that are living about you. 

 The first law of field work is exact obser- 

 vation, and this is learned soonest by habit- 

 ually writing down all the details you need 

 for identification. 



With these hints in mind, take an opera 

 or field glass, and go to look for your 

 friends. Don't start out before breakfast 

 at first, because the confusion of the 

 "matins" is discouraging — there is too 

 much to see and hear. But go as soon 

 after breakfast as possible, for the birds 

 quiet down and go into the woods for their 

 nooning earlier and earlier as the weather 

 gets warmer. 



You will not have to go far before you 

 find your first bird: 



THE ROBIN, 



He is, as every one knows, a domestic 

 little fellow, and very fond of society. He 

 considers it no liberty to take his dinners 

 in your front yard, and build his house in a 

 crotch of your piazza with the help of the 

 string you have inadvertently left within his 

 reach. 



Next to the crow, he is probably the best 

 known of our birds; but some of his city 

 friends have never been fortunate enough 

 to meet him, and as he is to be our "unit of 

 measure," it may be well to describe him 

 carefully. 



He is nine to ten inches long, and as he 

 is a general favorite, and has the courage 

 of his conviction that man is a "good fel- 

 low," he fares very well, and keeps fat on 

 cherries and strawberries if the supply of 

 fish worms runs low. Everything about him 

 bespeaks the favorite of fortune. He is 

 not always looking for food like the wood- 

 peckers, nor flitting about with nervous 

 restlessness like the warblers; but has plenty 

 of repose of manner, although he has a 

 nervous habit of jerking his tail when he is 

 excited. 



He has time to meditate when he chooses, 

 but like other sturdy, well-fed people, his 

 reflections generally take a cheerful turn; 

 and when he lapses into a poetical mood, 

 as he often does at sunrise and sunset, sit- 

 ting on a branch in the softened light and 

 whispering a little song to himself, his 

 sentiment is the healthy, every day home 

 sort, with none of the sadness or longing of 

 his cousin thrushes, but full of conteni. and 

 appreciation of the beautiful world he lives 

 in. 



Unlike some of his human friends, his 

 content does not interfere with his activity. 

 He is full of vigorous life, and his voice is 

 always to be heard above the rest of the 

 daybreak chorus. He has plenty of industry 

 and energy, too, for every season he quite 

 cheerfully shoulders the responsibility of 

 seeing three or four broods of bird child- 

 ren through all the dangers of cats, hawks 

 and first flights; keeping successive nests 

 full of gaping mouths supplied with worms 

 all the summer through. 



His proverbial red breast belongs to his 

 English cousin; and it must be confessed 

 that his is a homely reddish-brown, and that 

 his back is a dull blackish-gray. But per- 

 haps if he had been beautiful he would 

 have been vain, and then alas for the robin 

 we know and love now. 



His wife's breast is still less red, in fact she 

 looks as if she had been out in the rain so 

 much that most of her color had been washed 



