2 Bird - Lore 



quite ten acres, it would seem that the coming and going of the seasons 

 in flower and bird-life would bear a certain defined stamp not untinged by 

 monotony, yet it is quite otherwise. In New England at least, there 

 always chances the element of tantalizing uncertainty that is the salt 

 and spice of pursuit. 



Then, too, there are added the different phases born of the seven 

 ages of man, and the seventy times seven changes of mood and tempera- 

 ment. At first, birds were simply two-legged, feathered things, that sang 

 more or less well, and would usually discover the ripe side of every straw- 

 berry and cherry at least half an hour before the human picker appeared 

 on the scene. Spring and summer brought birds, how they lived in the 

 absent interval one didn't know, and any sort of systematic aid in solving 

 the feeding problem, other than shaking the table-cloth out of the win- 

 dow, did not trouble one. Neither did the matter of housing, to any prac- 

 tical extent. Bird-houses were mostly impossible vaudeville constructions, 

 with many doors and little privacy within, and certain to be draughty. 



Then came the "want to know period," when birds were things to 

 be listed, identified with deadly certainty upon insufficient evidence, and 

 treated in the precise manner of the multiplication table. These were 

 days of wonderful discoveries. When the Chat seen at a new angle was 

 recorded as a Prothonotary Warbler, causing one's really scientific friend 

 to smile indulgently and yawn, but quite politely, behind his hand. 



Then a reasonable familiarity with the common birds settled over me, 

 and their personalities became the prime factors. (Not but what I shall 

 always be hazy about certain Sparrows and fall-coated Warblers when 

 seen in the bush.) 



I no longer strove frantically to count every Robin in a flock, or filled 

 pages in my note-book to prove that a flock of Bluebirds seen on a cer- 

 tain February ii, at lo a.m., was not the same as a flock of the identical 

 birds seen the same afternoon just before sunset. There is always a time 

 when most students waste much vital force in trying to prove the unprov- 

 able and absolutely unimportant. 



In fact, it is not until the days of the spirit and ethical enjoyment 

 supplement the dusty days of dry-as-dust note-book record that the real 

 meaning of the birds, the birds about home, the birds of the garden, and 

 above all, the birds of one's own garden, are revealed. When this once 

 happens, the full chord is struck, combined not only of their meaning 

 to us, but also of the new relation in which we stand to them. In this rela- 

 tionship lies the full reward that comes to those of middle years to whom 

 the bird has ceased to be a bit of anatomy, a step in the ascending crea- 

 tive ladder, but is a personality, a voice that joins past to present so 

 imperceptibly that the transition to the future is an assured finality. 



Enough! So comes February again, the discouraged and discouraging 



