I 12 



Fifty Common Birds. 



bravery is due to no thoughtless confi- 

 dence, but is based on keen observation 

 and bird wit. He is always about — in the 

 garden, on the lawn, and around the house. 

 The back door, with its boundless possi- 

 bilities in the line of crumbs, attracts him 

 strongly. An instance is given where he 

 came regularly every day at the time when 

 the chickens were fed, sat on the fence till 

 the first rush and scramble were over, and 

 then flew down among the hens to get his 

 dinner. Where he finds friends he will not 

 only twitter on the lawn, haunt the back 

 door, and get acquainted with the hens, but 

 come on to the front piazza within a few 

 feet of the family, if they humor him with 

 an offering of crumbs. 



SONG SPARROW. 



A larger cousin of chippy's — about half 

 the size of a robin — the song sparrow differs 

 from him in almost every particular. We 

 admire chippy for his bravery and intelli- 

 gence, but we do not love him as we do 

 this simple little fellow, with his homely 

 cheeriness. In the spring he comes north 

 a few days after the robin and although 

 the chill from the snow banks gives him a 

 sore throat that makes his voice husky; you 

 will hear him singing away, as brightly as 

 if he had come back on purpose to bring 

 spring to the poor snow-bound farmers. 

 Even his chirp — of rich contralto quality 

 compared with the thin chip of his little 

 cousin — has a genuine, happy ring that 

 raises one's spirits; and when he throws up 

 his head and sings the sweet song that 

 has given him his name, you feel that the 

 world is worth living in. 



His brown coat has little beauty, but his 

 dark breastpin, surrounded by brown streaks, 

 sets off his light gray waistcoat to great ad- 

 vantage ; and the brown topknot that he 

 raises when he gets interested, gives him 

 an air of sympathetic attention that is very 

 winning. 



His song is the first set song that is likely 

 to attract your attention as you listen to the 

 birds near the house. It consists of one 

 high note repeated three times, and a rapid 

 run down the scale and back. 



In choosing the site for his nest, the song^ 

 sparrow is a true philosopher, adapting him- 

 self to circumstances with easy grace. At 

 one time he contents himself with making 

 a rude nest of straw at the bottom of a 

 roadside brush heap; at another he builds 

 in a willow, using the woolly catkins to 

 soften his bed; and when particularly for- 

 tunate, he has been known to protect his 

 young and indulge his own aesthetic sense 

 by nesting in a sweet-brier bush. Mr. 

 Burroughs speaks of the sparrow's careful 

 workmanship on page loo of " Birds and 

 Poets." 



REDWING BLACKBIRD. 



The large flocks of blackbirds seen com- 

 ing north in the spring are confusing at 

 first, but if you use your opera glass care- 

 fully — and though its rapid adjustment is 

 so troublesome at the outset that one is. 

 tempted to trust to his own eyes, a good 

 glass is really almost indispensable — ^you 

 will soon be able to discriminate the char- 

 acter of the majority of the birds of a 

 flock. 



Sometimes the crow blackbird and the 

 redwing fly together, but they more com- 

 monly go in separate flocks. At a distance, 

 the flight of the two species is perhaps the 

 most distinctive feature — the "keel-tail"' 

 steering apparatus of the crow blackbird 

 marking him anywhere. Then the keel- 

 tailed is a half larger than the robin, and. 

 the redwing a trifle smaller than that bird. 

 Known more familiarly, the redwing lacks 

 the noisy obtrusiveness of his awkward 

 cousin, and generally prefers the field to 

 the dooryard. Here, as Emerson says, 



"The redwingf flutes his o-ka-lee" 



and that in itself would be enough to dis- 

 tinguish him. 



