XII INTRODUCTION. 
colored and exceedingly cheerful Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Though the gardens of the 
northern and eastern part of our country are the homes of a large number of fine 
songsters, they cannot bear comparison with those of the South Atlantic and Gulf 
States, where that “King of Song,” the Mockingbird, from night to morn and from 
morn to night pours forth his sweetest reverberating music, always characteristic and 
beautiful, ever new and never tiring. This bird is the jewel among our Songbirds, and, 
according to the best judges of bird songs in Germany, it finds not its equal either in 
this country or in any other. In the southern gardens, if they be extensive and well 
stocked with trees and dense ornamental shrubbery, we may find another excellent 
songster, the elegant Cardinal Redbird, though it is more common in the datk ever- 
green thickets of the hollies, or in the entangled underwood on the edge of the forest. 
The pretty Blue Grosbeak, the nervous Carolina Wren, the always happy Orchard Oriole, 
and many others combine to make southern gardens attractive and poetical. 
As there are no large mountain chains running from east to west, our birds find 
no check in their wanderings from south to north. This abscence of mountains is the 
reason why so many of our birds are distributed over such an immense territory. 
Some species are found during the breeding season from the Gulf region to the fur 
countries, and even north to Alaska. In the West the Rocky Mountains form a natural 
barrier to bird distribution. Many of our eastern birds occur to the foot of these 
mountains In the mountains farther west they are represented by nearly allied, or 
entirely new species. Among the birds characteristic to these mountain regions is the 
Clarino, or Townsend’s Solitaire, who makes the mountain-sides re-echo with the 
sweetest music. On the wild and roaring torrents, which fall foaming and thundering 
over rocks, the highly interesting Dipper, or Water Ouzel, leads a happy and content 
life. Our familiar Eastern Bluebird is replaced by two nearly allied species in the West, 
and the Baltimore Oriole is represented by Bullock’s Oriole and the Arizona Hooded 
Oriole. Almost a dozen or more species of Hummingbirds buzz from flower to flower 
west of the Rocky Mountains, while in the East only one species occurs. 
BIRDS OF SONG. 
In an article, ‘Song Birds in Europe and America,’’* my esteemed friend, Prof. R. 
Ridgway, writes as follows: ‘It has been repeatedly stated by writers who have had 
the opportunity of making the comparison that the United States is very deficient in 
Song Birds as compared with Europe—the British Islands in particular. One writer 
even goes so far as to say that ‘it may be safely asserted that in the midland counties 
of England the Sky Lark alone, even in the month of March, sings more songs within 
the hearing of mankind than do all the songsters of the eastern United States,’— which, 
of course, is an exaggeration, The same writer says: ‘It is, no doubt, very patriotic 
to prove that the woods and fields of North America are as vocal with bird song as 
those of England. The attempt has been made, but it is only necessary to cross the 
* Audubon Magazine, Vol. I, pp. 127—131, 
