40 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
On Meeting Our Feathered Friends. 
Continued from page 35. 
you are to the manner born, will give 
a thrill which the miner feels when he 
strikes a nugget; the day will go down 
in your note-book—of course you will 
keep a note-book—as a Led Letter day. 
and the spot on which you made your 
find will become memorable. Years 
afterward you will associate with it the 
bird which you found there, and when 
you see the bird elsewhere you will al¬ 
ways think of this sacred spot. 
But as time goes on there will come a 
period when your heart will turn back 
to its first loves, to the commoner birds, 
like the robin, song-sparrow, flicker, 
blackbird or bobolink. You will reach 
a stage—always assuming that you are a 
born bird-lover—when you will want to 
know more of a bird than its name, and 
when you take your excursions into 
woods and fields you will be looking for 
more than a rare bird, or one which you 
have never seen before. Tou will want 
to learn .something of the inner life of 
even the commonest bird—its food sup¬ 
plies, its song or songs, the time of its 
coming in the spring and its going in the 
fall, its manner of winning its mate, its 
choice of nesting sites, the number of 
eggs it lays, the period of incubation, 
and so on. 
Much of this information you will find 
in your books, and it will do you no harm 
to read it there. But, after all, there is 
nothing like original information—infor¬ 
mation which you have dug out lor 
yourself. Moreover, there is a great deal 
in the life history of every bird upon 
which the books are silent. This may 
sound incredible to you, but it is true. 
No one has ever found the time or the 
inclination or the opportunity to find 
many of these things out. And you 
should, for one, be glad everything is not 
found out. There is something left for 
vou to do. The humblest bird-student 
may chance upon a discovery which the 
whole ornithological world will welcome. 
Even if vou make no startling discovery, 
a conscientiously kept note-book is al- 
vvavs a mine of wealth, and will contain 
items which any bird magazine will be 
glad to use, provided the matter is pre¬ 
sented in brief, readable shape. 
Hence, when you go out again into the 
great out-door world do not teel as it you 
were treading a charted field, accurately 
surveyed, with every possible path indi¬ 
cated. Such is not the case. The greater 
part of it is virgin soil. But, remember, 
you must bring to the task that without 
which the performance of no task is 
worth while, namely, love. T ou must 
be painstaking, patient, accurate. Do 
not jump at conclusions, but verify your 
facts again and again. Guess at nothing. 
Keep statistics. 
For instance, if you find the nest of a 
bird which has hitherto been supposed 
not to nest in your section, first make 
sure of your species. Then describe the 
location of its nest, the kind of a tree or 
bush it is in, height from ground, date, 
whether or not water is near. Finally 
after all this is done, photograph the 
nest if possible. A live bird is a very 
difficult subject for the amateur photog¬ 
rapher. So is its nest, for that matter; 
but it presents no insurmountable diffi¬ 
culties to an ingenious boy or girl. 
I may add in conclusion, that you 
should also learn to identify a bird by 
ear as well as by sight. Learn its song 
and call-notes. You will be astonished 
at the number of them. Do you happen 
to know, for instance, that the bluejay 
has a very tender, beautiful, minor song? 
Also try to learn to identify a bird by its 
flight. This is not nearly as difficult as 
you will at first imagine, and in a short 
time you can tell a dove, cuckoo, black¬ 
bird, bluejay, goldfirfch, meadowlark, 
robin and many others by their flight 
alone, at a distance of a quarter of a mile 
or more. Lowell says, in one of his 
poems, that he knew every tree by its 
leaf, its bark, or its naked outlines in the 
wintertime. Thus should you know 
your birds .—Elmore Elliott Drake. 
“Every being possesses the Divine 
Spark, and when we learn to think oi 
horses, dogs and all animals as our‘Little 
Brothers,’ handicapped in the race of life, 
all the world will be better for it.” 
