INTRODUCTION 
I write these few introductory sentences to this volume only 
to second so worthy an attempt to quicken and enlarge the gen- 
eral interest in our birds. The book itself is merely an introduc- 
tion, and is only designed to place a few clews in the reader’s 
hands which he himself or herself is to follow up. 1 can say that 
it is reliable and is written in a vivacious strain and by a real 
bird lover, and should prove a help and a stimulus to any one 
who seeks by the aid of its pages to become better acquainted 
with our songsters. The pictures, with a few exceptions, are 
remarkably good and accurate, and these, with the various group- 
ing of the birds according to color, season, habitat, etc., ought to 
render the identification of the birds, with no other weapon than 
an opera glass, an easy matter. 
When 1 began the study of the birds I had access to a copy 
of Audubon, which greatly stimulated my interest in the pursuit, 
but I did not have the opera glass, and I could not take Audubon 
with me on my walks, as the reader may this volume, and he 
will find these colored plates quite as helpful as those of Audubon 
or Wilson. 
But you do not want to make out your bird the first time; 
the book or your friend must not make the problem too easy for 
you. You must go again and again, and see and hear your bird 
under varying conditions and get a good hold of several of its 
characteristic traits. Things easily learned are apt to be easily for- 
gotten. Some ladies, beginning the study of birds, once wrote to 
me, asking if 1 would not please come and help them, and set 
them right about certain birds in dispute. I replied that that 
would be getting their knowledge too easily; that what I and 
any one else told them they would be very apt to forget, but that 
the things they found out themselves they would always remem- 
ber. We must in a way earn what we have or keep. Only thus 
docs it become ours, a real part of us. 
Not very long afterward 1 had the pleasure of walking with 
one of the ladies, and I found her eye and ear quite as sharp as 
my own, and that she was in a fair way to conquer the bird king- 
dom without any outside help. She said that the groves and 
fields, through which she used to walk with only a languid inter- 
