: ers of the ‘nes cawia, and nue Mountain Song Sparrow, 
the rest of the region. There is nothing but its own choice 
that keeps the bird in any location, so that, occasionally, 
even ornithologists have difficulty in deciding on the real | 
name of a particular bird, but in general, the darker and 
larger birds are in the damper coast regions, while the grayer 
song sparrows are in the desert or the s sunnier lands of the 
interior. ) | 
A song sparrow is as much at home in es nibbers, : 
the tangled thickets, or the woodpiles of the residential parts — 
of of our cities as he is about secluded streams, lakes, or salt — 
water, but. we humans are so often blind to the beauty of our 
surroundings, and so deaf to the music we might hear, that 
we do not recognize him when he runs about our yards, or 
sings from the top of hedges. _ 
“Boys, learn to use your ears, so ) that you may often 
get a thrill not shared by ordinary people, when you catch 
a bit of music from woodsy patches or drifting down 
out of the sky even about our largest cities,’ said the 
bird woman and she went on to tell them that one late winter’ 
day in Tacoma she had been wandering through Point 
_ Defiance Park, on the lookout for all that beautiful place 
- eould show her, when she caught a scrap of song, which she 
knew was part of Rusty’s melody. Its quality was below — 
par, but it was bravely fluted again and again, and she had 
no difficulty in following the song to its maker, a bird, that 
with a companion, was examining every dead leaf, and look- 
; ing about all the naked branches of a small maple tree. 
— It seemed to be giving only part of its attention to food 
getting, and the rest went toward paying court to its com- 
2 rade who looked at him only out of the corners of her brown 
eyes, as she twisted and turned, showing her trim figure 
and smooth feathers to their best advantage. Meditating on — 
the kinship of all animal life, she walked on and came, in the 
a course of her wanderings, to a Rusty Song Sparrow in full — 
_ song. As she turned homeward, this bird seemed to follow 
8 
