CHANGES IlSr THE HABITS OF BIRDS. 



Birds acquire new habits as certain changes take place 

 upon the surface of the country that create a necessity for 

 using different modes of sheltering and protecting their 

 young. Singing-birds frequent in greatest numbers our 

 half-cultivated lands and the woods adjoining them. It 

 may therefore be inferred that as the country grows 

 older and is more extensively cleared and cultivated, the 

 numbers of our songsters will increase, and it is not im- 

 probable that their vocal powei'S may improve. It may 

 be true that for many years after the first settlement of 

 this country there were but few singing-birds and that 

 they have multiplied with the cultivation of the soil. At 

 that time, though the same species existed here and were 

 musical, their numbers were so small that they were not 

 universally heard. Hence early travellers were led to 

 believe that American birds were generally silent. 



By a little observation we should soon be convinced 

 that the primitive forest contains but few songsters. 

 There you find crows, jays, woodpeckers, and other 

 noisy birds in great numbers ; and you occasionally hear 

 the notes of the sylvias and solitary thrushes. But not 

 until you are in the vicinity of farms and other culti- 

 vated lands are your ears sahited by a full band of feath- 

 ered musicians. The bobolinks are not seen in a forest, 

 and are unfrequent in the wild pastures or meadows which 

 were their primitive resorts. At the present day they 

 have left their early habitats, and seek the cultivated 

 grass-lands, that afford them a more abundant supply of 



