The Warbler Book 



By FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



IN Bird-Lore for December, 1903, the editor mentioned briefly a 

 proposed book on the Warblers of North America, and requested 

 the aid of students of birds throughout the country in the preparation 

 of this volume. Continued study of our birds emphasizes the absolute 

 necessity for many observers if we are to have anything approaching 

 adequate biographies of even a single species. Habits should be affirmed 

 or denied only on the basis of abundant data; again, what proves true of a 

 species in one part of its range may be incorrect in another; and we need, 

 therefore, not only many observations from one place but from many places 

 throughout a bird's range before we can write its life - history with an 

 approach to thoroughness. 



Cooperation, therefore, is the watchword of the bird-study of to-day. 

 Instead of thinking that there is little left to learn, every bird student should 

 feel that it is his special privilege to add to our knowledge of birds in 

 nature. He may not make a novel or startling discovery, but he may 

 confirm some observation which has already been made, and that, as a 

 matter of fact, is second in value only to the original observation itself. 

 An act may be attributed to a species on the basis of a single observation : 

 but a habit, only after many observations. 



The truth is, the best of our bird biographies tell the story of the 

 individual rather than of the species. Life is too short for a single student 

 to acquire a thorough knowledge of more than a few species of birds, and even 

 then his experience is apt to be limited to a small part of their range. In 

 the writer's opinion, the bird biographies in Bendire's ' Life History of 

 North American Birds' are among the best if not the best of any which 

 have been written. This is not solely because of Major Bendire's wide 

 field experience and powers of observation, but also because he secured the 

 cooperation of ornithologists throughout the country. It was not required 

 that they should be skilled in painting pen pictures of bird-life; facts, not 

 rhetorical flights, were wanted, and the result is one of the most satisfactory 

 books of reference of its kind. 



There is an object-lesson for us here. In our enthusiastic appreciation 

 of the bird as a creature of rare grace and beauty, the final touch giving 

 life to woods and fields, let us not forget that as bird students we are here 

 more intimately concerned with the birds' habits than with the part they 

 play as the 'jewels of creation,' when, with no loss of appreciation of the 

 esthetic side of bird -life, we may make our bird biographies a storehouse of 

 exact and detailed observations in regard to a bird's distribution, migra- 

 tions, its manner of courting, singing, nest-building, incubating, caring for 

 its young, the relation between its structure and habit, etc. 



(61) 



