10 East and West 
She is~as subtle and mysterious as she is 
changeful and elusive. She is glad, she is sad 
in the sky; she whispers, she storms in the 
wind, and all the trees whisper and sigh with 
her. She is a child and anemones and bluets 
are her child-thoughts; she is voluptuous and 
flaunts herself for an hour in ironweed and 
milkweed, in goldenrod and asters. The 
birds are more intimately related to us than 
in the West—everything is nearer, the world 
is smaller. Somehow the Western birds do 
not come into one’s thought-life quite as do 
the Eastern; the robin is not so much a part of 
the lawn, the oriole of the orchard, or the 
thrush of the wood-lot. Perhaps it is because 
we have in the West a more distant horizon 
and thus hold everything farther from us. 
An Eastern bird lover, for the first time in 
California or Arizona, will rejoice to find so 
many relatives of his old friends, for it will 
make him feel at home; and yet at the same 
time he will recognise that in some subtle 
distinctions they are different from their 
Eastern congeners. Thus there are Western 
bluebirds, Western robins, Western hermits 
—meadow larks, mocking-birds, vesper, song, 
and chipping sparrows, gnatcatchers, and 
kinglets. Juncos, chicadees, goldfinches, 
