396 THE STRUCTURE AND LIFE OF BIRDS cHap. 
wanted. The older writers put down much that had 
little foundation, believing a thing simply because it 
was wonderful on the principle of credo quia im- 
possibile. And some of these old stories are still 
repeated and believed, while the real wonders of 
nature, as startling, if not as grotesque, as anything 
that can be invented, often remain unnoticed. 
Examine every rd, then, with a field-glass or a 
binocular telescope, and get to know the song that 
each sings and, on getting home, take a good book 
on birds and try to identify any you were not certain 
of. The songs of birds are beautiful in themselves, 
and it is, no doubt, delightful to listen to them with- 
out knowing in the least what birds are singing, or, 
perhaps, even without distinguishing one song from 
another. But it adds to the pleasure if the song 
tells you of the bird and the bird of the song. When 
you first learn to distinguish a Thrush’s note from a 
Blackbird’s, and still more when you acquire the rare 
accomplishment of knowing a Blackcap’s song from 
a Garden Warbler’s, the delight in the song may, no 
doubt, be at times alloyed with a certain baser feeling 
of pride. But the baser feeling does not exclude the 
higher, and it is difficult to be fond of a particular 
song without wishing to know the songster. And 
you come to like the Thrush’s song all the better when 
you find that he sometimes goes on for a quarter of 
an hour without ever repeating himself exactly. You 
become a partisan of particular birds, and, perhaps, hold 
that the Thrush is a better singer than the Nightingale, 
or the Blackbird than either. And you learn to take 
pleasure in such minor things as call or alarm notes. 
