4 
INTRODUCTION. 
This little book should do much to popularize bird-study and 
to spread a knowledge of our common birds among our people. 
I hope devoutly that an elfort will be made to give them suit- 
able names. We should give them names a poet or a child 
can use. A Chaucer poring lovingly over his favorite flower, 
the daisy, could call it by a name which is itself full of poetry. 
Even the unimaginative clown, Nick Bottom, could sing of 
"The Ouzel Cock, so black of hue, 
With orange-tawny bill, 
The Throstle with his note so true. 
The Wren with little quill, 
The Finch, the Sparrow, and the Lark. 
The plain-song Cuckoo gray." 
And a Burns can invoke the Throstle in lines as musical as the 
song of the bird itself — "And thou mellow mavis, that hails 
the night-fa'." 
But how shall an Australian bard sing of "The Red-rumped 
Acanthiza," or of that delightful songster, "The Rufous- 
breasted Thickhead"? Australian Nature-poetry will be han- 
dicapped until our children give names like "Bobolink," and 
"Chickadee," and * 'Whip-poor-will," and "Jacky Winter," to our 
birds. 
"Oriel," in the Argus, some time ago, showed how hard it is 
to write of love's young dream in Australian verse. 
"Sweetheart, we watched the evening sky grow pale. 
And drowsy sweetness stole away our senses. 
While ran adown the swamp the Pectoral Rail, 
The shy Hypotaenidia philippinensis. 
"How sweet a thing is love! Sweet as the rose, 
Fragrant as flowers, fair as the sunlight beaming ! 
Only the Sooty Oyster-Catcher knows 
How sweet to us, as there we lingered dreaming. 
"Dear, all the secret's ours. The Sharp-tailed Stint 
Spied, but he will not tell — though you and I 
Paid Cupid's debts from Love's own golden mint, 
While Yellow-Bellied Shrike-Tits fluttered nigh. 
"The Honey-eaters heard; the Fuscous — yea, 
The Warty-faced, the Lunulated, too; 
But this kind feathered tribe will never say 
What words you said to me, or I to you. 
' The golden bloom was glorious in the furze, 
And gentle twittering came from out the copses ; 
It was the Carinated Flycatchers, 
Or else the black Monarcha melanopsis. 
"That day our troth we plighted — blissful hour. 
Beginning of a joy a whole life long! 
And while the wide world seemed to be in flower. 
The Chestnut-rumped Ground-Wren burst forth in song." 
It surely would not be amiss if the Bird Observers* Clubs 
throughout Australia, and the Royal Australasian Ornitholo- 
gists' Union, enlisted the aid of the State Education Depart- 
ments, and endeavored to find out what names the children use 
for the birds of their district. Executive committees upon 
bird names are good; but a good name is not evoked by argu- 
ments in committee. It ofttimes comes from the happy 
inspiration of some child who loves the bird. At present the 
names given by classifiers are often an offence. A few even- 
