The Birds and Poets 65 



of which was done so suddenly that the little bird 

 appeared to be tied to a rubber band which vio- 

 lently jerked him back to his perch. Sometimes 

 he would fly straight up into the air three or four 

 feet above the shrub, and then tumble over and 

 dart down again, as if he had been shot in his 

 flight. I remember one of his side-flights was so 

 quick and sudden, I thought he had left the bush 

 and flown away, and my eyes followed the direc- 

 tion of his flight for some distance, until I suddenly 

 lost him. Glancing back at his old perch, I was 

 surprised to find him there cooly waiting for 

 another dainty winged morsel to appear. 



I was not then familiar with this peculiarity of 

 the bird, nor with the bird itself, but I felt con- 

 fident that this marked characteristic would be 

 mentioned by some authority as a distinguishing 

 trait. I hurried to consult a number of the modern 

 authorities, and to my surprise found that none of 

 them mentioned this as the peculiar habit of any 

 of the flycatchers. At last I referred to the 

 authority of all authorities, — Audubon, and there 

 I found it at once : "returning with marked sudden- 

 ness to the same place to alight." Audubon, one 

 finds, settles many things that all the rest know not 

 of. He spent all of his long life in the woods and 

 fields observing the birds, and his record of his ob- 

 servations is marvelously free from mistakes, and 

 wonderfully full of just what one wants to know 

 about birds. His wisdom is born of his own expe- 

 riences, and is not mere knowledge gathered from 



