262 East and West 
table manners their family connection. Again, 
how distinct from all others are the wren 
personality and wren manners. 
To go up and down the continent recog- 
nising, comparing and enjoying birds in this 
way is a resource which belongs, not to those 
who merely study birds, but rather to those 
who have the companionship of birds, and this 
pleasant intercourse comes not from read- 
ing human nature into their ways but—bird 
nature: acquiring a sympathy for bird traits 
and bird manners, a somewhat bird-like 
nature perhaps. You must feel yourself on 
the wing with the wild geese, or teetering on 
the shore with the sandpiper; diving with the 
grebe, or skulking through the marsh grass 
with the rail. You must peer among the 
leaves with the vireos, dart with the agile 
redstart, and with the finches know the pecu- 
liar satisfaction of scraping the bill on a twig. 
In going from the eastern to the western 
border of our estate we meet birds whose 
family connections we may not readily recog- 
nise, interesting personalities that impress 
us at first as foreigners: the solitaires, ouzels, 
phainopeplas, road-runners, bush-tits, and 
wren-tits. A Western ornithologist, on the 
other hand, going East for the first time would 
