Preface 
vii 
bing of nests more than he ; few men, not spec- 
cialists, know so much about bird life. 
Nature, the best teacher of us all, trains the 
child’s eyes through study of the birds to 
quickness and precision, which are the first 
requisites for all intelligent observation in every 
field of knowledge. I know boys who can 
name a flock of ducks when they are mere specks 
twinkling in their rapid rush across the autumn 
sky; and girls who instantly recognise a gold- 
finch by its waving flight above the garden. 
The white band across the end of the kingbird’s 
tail leads to his identification the minute some 
sharp young eyes perceive it. At a consider- 
able distance, a little girl I know distinguished 
a white-eyed from a red-eyed vireo, not by the 
colour of the iris of either bird’s eye, but by the 
yellowish white bars on the white-eyed vireo’s 
wings which she had noticed at a glance. An- 
other girl named the yellow-billed cuckoo, al- 
most hidden among the shrubbery, by the 
white thumb-nail spots on the quills of his out- 
spread tail where it protruded for a second 
from a mass of leaves. A little urchin from the 
New York City slums was the first to point out 
to his teacher, who had lived twenty years on a 
farm, the faint reddish streaks on the breast of 
a yellow warbler in Central Park. Many there 
are who have eyes and see not. 
What does the study of birds do for the 
