yd) dtseoceebetes ntti sz breil st >t Saat ; : 5 : iat : Renee tee ore 4 f0r8 CS eres om. eg Ee Rae ene: ey ene “tee, a. Me ‘ ¥, +": * by iw Ke o iv us : eS ME Se TO Mar Sis 4 MK teh Put 1 Division of Birda wath \\ Books bp Hr. Correp, FRIENDS ON THE SHELF. 12mo, $1.25, net. Postage extra. NATURE’S INVITATION. 16mo, $1.10, eZ, Postpaid, $1.21. THE CLERK OF THE WOODS. 16mo, $1.10, met. Postpaid, $1.20. FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA. 16mo, $1.10, net. Postpaid, $1.19. EVERYDAY BIRDS. Elementary Studies. With twelve colored Illustrations repro- duced from Audubon. Square 12mo, $1.00. BIRDS IN THE BUSH. 16mo, $1.25. A RAMBLER’S LEASE. 16mo, $1.25. THE FOOT-PATH WAY. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. A FLORIDA SKETCH-BOOK. 16mo, $1.25. SPRING NOTES FROM’ TENNESSEE. 16mo, $1.25. A WORLD OF GREEN HILLS. 16mo, $1.25. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston AND New YorK. BLUE JAY Pos Male. Sees Females a ¢ 4 ‘EVERYDAY BIRDS ‘ELEMENTARY STUDIES BY BRADFORD TORREY WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLORS AFTER AUDUBON, AND TWO FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Che Riverside Press, Cambridge COPYRIGHT, I90I, BY BRADFORD TORREY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FIFTH IMPRESSION CONTENTS PAGE . Two Littte Kines . d : é 5 rel ee THE CHICKADEE , ‘ : : ; ‘ 7 . THe Brown CREEPER : : ; . ee | . THe Brown THRASHER . ; : ; : 15 . Tae BUTCHER-BIRD . ; é ; , o #8 . THE SCARLET TANAGER . : : ‘ ‘ 22 . THE SONG SPARROW . : : ; . 26 . THe FIELD SPARROW AND THE eer : 30 . Some APRIL SPARROWS : : ; A «| ee . Tue ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK . ; ‘ 40 . Tue Biue JAY . : ‘ : p : . 43 . Tue KINGBIRD . : ‘ ‘ : ‘ P 47 . THE HUMMINGBIRD . ; : i : i Om . Tae CHIMNEY SWIFT : : : | : 56 . NIGHTHAWK AND WHIP-POOR-WILL . : .-) 69 . THe FLICKER . 2 F ‘ é : : 64 . Tue BITTERN : p é : : : . 68 . Brrps ror EVERYBODY . : ] ; : 82 . WINTER PENSIONERS . ‘ : ; ; Ly Se . WATCHING THE PROCESSION . é : : 93 . SouTHWARD BouNnD . i ‘ P : 3 99 INDEX 6 ° : : : : ‘ a OG Hp Oe ae hk ee F 4 ry ) 4 TIS wew de Aaey ; be eae bt ee “ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Pace Bur Jay . ; : ; - (page 43) Frontispiece GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET . ; : : ; : 2 CHICKADEE . : : : ; 4 ‘ : ‘ Pa BROWN CREEPER . : ‘ : , : : ; 12 Brown THRASHER . : ‘ : ‘ : 2 » 16 SCARLET TANAGER ; : : : ‘ é : 22 Sone SPARROW . , : : P : ‘ ‘ ae ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK . : : : : : 40 RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD ; , ; : PO 5-2 NIGHTHAWK . : ; : : , ‘ : : 60 WHIP-POOR-WILL i ; : f : : : » 62 FLICKER . ; ‘ : : : ; ; : : 64 The illustrations entitled A Downy Woodpecker and A Branch Estab- lishment, facing page 88, are from photographs by Mr. Frank M. Chap- man and were first printed in Bird-Lore. EVERYDAY BIRDS I TWO LITTLE KINGS Tue largest bird in the United States is the California vulture, or condor, which measures from tip to tip of its wings nine feet and a half. At the other end of the scale are the humming- birds, one kind of which, at least, has wings that are less than an inch and a half in length. Next to these insect-like midgets come the birds which have been well named in Latin “ Regulus,” and in English “ kinglets,” — that is to say, little kings, The fitness of the title comes first from their tiny size, — the chickadee is almost a giant in comparison, —and next from the fact that they wear patches of bright color (crowns) on their heads. Two species of kinglets are found at one season or another in nearly all parts of the United States, and are known respectively as the golden- crown —or goldcrest—and the ruby-crown. 2 EVERYDAY BIRDS The golden-crown has on the top of its head an orange or yellow patch (sometimes one, some- times the other) bordered with black; the ruby- crown wears a very bright red patch, though you may look at many specimens without finding it. Only part of the birds have it, — the adult males, perhaps, — and even those that have it do not always display it. The orange or yellow of the goldcrest, on the other hand, is worn by all the birds, and is never concealed. If you are a be- ginner in bird study, uncertain of your species, look for the black stripes on the crown. If they are not there, and the bird is really a kinglet, it must be a ruby-crown. You may know it, also, —from the goldcrest, I mean, — by what looks like a light-colored ring round the eye. In fact, one of the ruby-crown’s most noticeable peculiarities is a certain bareheaded, large-eyed appearance. Unless your home is near or beyond the northern boundary of the United States, you need not look for either kinglet in summer. The ruby-crown is to be seen during its migra- , tions in spring and fall, the goldcrest in fall, winter, and spring. At any time of the year they are well worth knowing. Nobody could look at them without admiration ; so pretty, so tiny, and so exceed- GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLET I. Male. 2. Female TWO LITTLE KINGS 3 ingly quick and graceful in their motions. Both species are of a prevailing greenish or olive shade, with noticeable light-colored wing-bars, and light, unstreaked, unspotted under parts. The ruby-crown is famous as a singer. A genuine music-box, we may call him. In spring, especially, he is often bubbling over with melody ; a rapid, wren-like tune, with sundry quirks and turns that are all his own; on the whole de- cidedly original, with plenty of what musical people call accent and a strongly marked rhythm or swing. Over and over he goes with it, as if he could never have enough; beginning with quick, separate, almost guttural notes, and wind- ing up with a twittity, twittity, twittity, which, once heard, is not likely to be soon forgotten. A very pleasing vocalist he surely is; and when his extreme smallness is taken into account he is fairly to be esteemed a musical prodigy. Every one who has written about the song, from Audubon down, has found it hard to say enough about it. Audubon goes so far as to say that it is as powerful as a canary’s, and much more varied and pleasing. That I must think an ex- aggeration ; natural enough, no doubt, under the circumstances (romantic surroundings count for a good deal in all questions of this kind), but still a stretching of the truth. However, I give 4 EVERYDAY BIRDS but my own opinion. Let my readers hear the bird, and judge for themselves. They will enjoy him, whether or no. Every such new acquaint- ance that a man makes is a new source of life- long happiness. The enormous California vulture is said to be almost dumb, having “no vocal apparatus” and “emitting only a weak hissing sound.” What a contrast between him and the ruby-crown, —a mere speck of a bird, but with a musical nature and the voice of anartist. Precious stuff, they say, comes in small packages. Even the young- est of us may have noticed that it is always the smaller birds that sing. But if all the singers are small birds, it is not true that all small birds are singers. The golden- crowned kinglet, for example, is hardly to be classed under that head. The gifts of Providence are various, and are somewhat sparingly dealt out. One creature receives one gift, another creature another, — just as is true of men, women, and children. This boy “has an ear,’ as the saying goes. He is naturally musical. Give him a chance, and let him not be too much in love with something else, and he will make a singer, or a player on instruments, or possibly a com- poser. His brother has no ear; he can hardly tell Old Hundred from Yankee Doodle. It is TWO LITTLE KINGS 5 useless for him to “take lessons.” He can paint, perhaps, or invent a machine, or make money, or edit a paper, or teach school, or preach sermons, or practice medicine; but he will never win a name in the concert room. The case of the golden-crown is hardly so hopeless as that, I am glad to believe ; for if he is not much of a musician now, as he surely is not, he is not without some signs of an undevel- oped musical capacity. The root of the matter seems to be in him. He tries to sing, at any rate, and not unlikely, as time goes on, — say In a million or two of years, — he may become as capable a performer as the ruby-crown is at pre- sent. There is no telling what a creature may make of himself if his will is good, and he has astronomical time in which to work. The dullest of us might learn something with a thousand years of schooling. What you will mostly hear from the goldcrest is no tune, but a hurried zee, zee, zee, repeated at intervals as he flits about the branches of a tree, or, less often, through the mazes of a piece of shrubbery. His activity is wonderful, and his motions are really as good as music. No dancing could be prettier to look at. All you need is eyes to see him. But you will have to “ look sharp.” Now he is there for an instant, snatch- 6 EVERYDAY BIRDS ing a morsel or letting out a zee, zee, zee. Now he is yonder, resting upon the air, hovering against a tuft of pine needles, his wings all in a mist, they beat so swiftly. So through the tree he goes, and from one tree to another, till pre- sently he is gone for good. Once in a great while you may find him feed- ing among the dry leaves on the ground. Then you can really watch him, and had better make the most of your opportunity. Or you may catch him exploring bushes or low savins, which is a chance almost as favorable. The great thing is to become familiar with his voice. With that help you will find him ten times as often as with- out it. He is mostly a bird of the woods, and prefers evergreens, though he does not confine himself to them. If you do not know him already, it will be a bright and memorable day — though it be the dead of winter— when you first see him and are able to call him by his regal name, Regulus satrapa. It is a great pity that so common and lovely a creature, one of the beauties of the world, should be unseen by so many good peo- ple. It is true, as we say so often about other things, that they do not know what they miss ; but they miss a good deal, notwithstanding. If THE CHICKADEE Tue chickadee, like many other birds, takes his name from his notes; from some of his notes, that is to say, for he has many others besides his best-known chick-a-dee-dee-dee. His most musi- cal effort, regarded by many observers as his true song, sounds to most ears like the name Pheebe, — a clear, sweet whistle of two or three notes, with what musical people call a minor in- terval between them. It is so strictly a whistle that any boy can imitate it well enough to de- ceive not only another boy, but the bird himself. In late winter and early spring, especially, when the chickadee is in a peculiarly cheerful frame of mind, it is very easy to draw him out by whistling these notes in his hearing. Some- times, however, the sound seems to fret or anger him, and instead of answering in kind, he will fly near the intruder, scolding dee-dee-dee. He remains with us both summer and winter, and wears the same colors at all seasons. 8 EVERYDAY BIRDS Perhaps no wild bird is more confiding. If a man is at work in the woods in cold weather, and at luncheon will take a little pains to feed the chickadees that are sure to be more or less about him, he will soon have them tame enough to pick up crumbs at his feet, and: even to take them from his hand. Better even than crumbs is a bit of mince pie, or a piece of suet. I have myself held out a piece of suet to a chickadee as I walked through the woods, and have had him fly down at once, perch on my finger like a tame canary, and fall to eating. But he was a bird that another man, a woodcutter of my acquaintance, had tamed in the manner above described. The chickadee’s nest is built in a hole, gener- ally in a decayed stump or branch. It is very pretty to watch the pair when they are digging out the hole. All the chips are carried away and dropped at a little distance from the tree, so that the sight of them litterimg the ground may not reveal the birds’ secret to an enemy. Male and female dress alike. The top of the head is black — for which reason they are called black-capped chickadees, or black-capped __ tit- mice — and the chin is of the same color, while the cheeks are clear white. If you are not sure that you know the bird, stay near him till he CHICKADEE z. Male. 2. Female i i ae tS sped Gay a i io THE CHICKADEE 9 pronounces his own name. He will be pretty certain to do it, sooner or later, especially if you excite him a little by squeaking or chirping to him. : Although the chickadee is small and delicate- looking, he seems not to mind the very coldest of weather. Give him enough to eat, and the wind may whistle. He picks his food, tiny in- sects, insects’ eggs, and the like, out of crevices in the bark of trees and about the ends of twigs, and so is seldom or never without resources. The deepest snows do not cover up his dinner-table. His worst days, no doubt, are those in which everything is covered with sleet. One of his prettiest traits is his skill in hang- ing back downward from the tip of a swinging branch or from the under side of a leaf while in search of provender. As a small boy, who had probably been to the circus, once said, the chick- adee is a “first-rate performer on the flying trapeze.” Til THE BROWN CREEPER In the midst of a Massachusetts winter, when a man with his eyes open may walk five miles over favorable country roads and see only ten or twelve kinds of birds, the brown creeper’s faint zeep is a truly welcome sound. He is a very little fellow, very modestly dressed, without a bright feather on him, his lower parts being white and his upper parts a mottling of brown and white, such as a tailor might call a “ pepper and salt mixture.” The creeper’s life seems as quiet as his colors. You will find him by overhearing his note some- where on one side of you as you pass. Now watch him. ‘He is traveling rather quickly, with an alert, business-like air, up the trunk of a tree in a spiral course, hitching along inch by inch, hugging the bark, and every little while stop- ping to probe a crevice of it with his long, curved, sharply pointed bill. He is in search of food, — insects’ eggs, grubs, and what not ; morsels so tiny that it need not surprise us to see THE BROWN CREEPER 11 him spending the whole day in satisfying his hunger. There is one thing to be said for such a life: the bird is never without something to take up his mind. In fact, if he enjoys the pleasures of the table half as well as some human beings seem to do, his life ought to be one of the happiest imaginable. How flat and thin he looks, and how perfectly his colors blend with the grays and browns of the mossy bark! No wonder it is easy for us to pass near him without knowing it. We under- stand now what learned people mean when they talk about the “ protective coloration” of ant- mals. A hawk flying overhead, on the lookout for game, must have hard work to see this bit of a bird clinging so closely to the bark as to be almost a part of it. And if a hawk does pass, you may be pretty sure the creeper will see him, and will flatten himself still more tightly against the tree and stay as motionless as the bark itself. He needs neither to fight nor to run away. His strength, as the prophet said, is to sit still. But look! As the creeper comes to the upper part of the tree, where the bark is less furrowed than it is below, and therefore less likely to con- ceal the scraps of provender that he is in search 12 ? EVERYDAY BIRDS of, he suddenly lets go his hold and flies down to the foot of another tree, and begins again to creep upward. If you keep track of him, you will see him do this hour after hour. He never walks down. Up, up, he goes, and if you look sharply enough, you will see that whenever he pauses he makes use of his sharp, stiff tail- feathers as a rest —a kind of camp-stool, as it were, or, better still, a bracket. He is built for his work; color, bill, feet, tail-feathers — all were made on purpose for him. He is a native of the northern country, and therefore to most readers of this book he is a winter bird only. If you know his voice, you will hear him twenty times for once that you see him. If you know neither him nor his voice, it will be worth your while to make his acquaint- — ance. When you come upon a little bunch of chick- adees flitting through the woods, listen for a quick, lispmg note that is something like theirs, but different. It may be the creeper’s, for al- though he seems an unsocial fellow, seldom flock- ing with birds of his own kind, he is fond of the chickadee’s cheerful companionship. To see him and hear his zeep, you would never take him for a songster; but there is no telling by the looks of a bird how well he can sing. In Siete ee BROWN CREEPER Z. Male. 2. Female & ki sf Se - end THE BROWN CREEPER 13 fact, plainly dressed birds are, as a rule, the best musicians. The very handsome ones have no need to charm with the voice. And our modest little creeper has a song, and a fairly good one ; one that answers his purpose, at all events, al- though it may never make him famous. In springtime it may be heard now and then even in a place like Boston Common ; but of course you must go where the birds pair and nest if you would hear them at their finest; for birds, ike other people, sing best when they feel happiest. The brown creeper’s nest used to be something of a mystery. It was sought for in woodpeck- ers’ holes. Now it is known that as a general thing it is built behind a scale of loose bark on a dead tree, between the bark and the trunk. Ordinarily, if not always, it will be found under a flake that is loose at the bottom instead of at the top. Into such a place the female bird packs tightly a mass of twigs and strips of the soft in- ner bark of trees, and on the top of this prepares her nest and lays her eggs. Her mate flits to and fro, keeping her company, and once in a while cheering her with a song, but so far as has yet been discovered he takes no hand in the work itself. It is quite possible that the female, who is to occupy the nest, prefers to have her own way in the construction of it. 14 EVERYDAY BIRDS After the young ones are hatched, at all events, the father bird’s behavior leaves nothing to be complained of. He “ comes to time,” as we say, in the most loyal manner. In and out of the nest he and the mother go, feeding their hungry charges, making their entry and exit always at the same point, through the merest crack of a door, between the overhanging bark and the tree, just above the nest. It is a very pretty bit of family life. It would be hard to imagine a nest better con- cealed from a bird’s natural enemies, especially when, as is often the case, the tree stands in water on the edge of a stream or lake. And not only is the nest wonderfully well hidden, but it is perfectly sheltered from rain, as it would not be if it were built under a strip of bark that was peeled from above. All in all, we must respect the simple, demure-looking creeper as a very clever architect. eae IV THE BROWN THRASHER Tue brown thrasher — called also the brown thrush —is a bird considerably longer than a robin, with a noticeably long tail and a long, curved bill. His upper parts are reddish brown or cinnamon color, and his lower parts white or whitish, boldly streaked with black. You will find him in hedgerows, in scrub-lands, and about the edges of woods, where he keeps mostly on or near the ground. His general manner is that of a creature who wishes nothing else so much as to escape notice. ‘Only let me alone,” he seems to say. If he sees you coming, as he pretty cer- tainly will, he dodges into the nearest thicket or barberry-bush, and waits for you to pass. Farmers know him as the “ planting-bird.” In New England he makes his appearance with commendable punctuality between the twentieth of April and the first of May; and while the farmer is planting his garden, the thrasher en- courages him with song. One man, who was planting beans, imagined that the bird said, 16. EVERYDAY BIRDS “Drop it, drop it! Cover it up, cover it up!” Perhaps he did. It was good advice, anyhow. In his own way the thrasher is one of the great singers of the world. He is own cousin to the famous mockingbird, and at the South, where he and the mocker may be heard singing side by side, — and so much alike that it is hard to tell one from the other, — he is known as the “ brown mocking-bird.”” He would deserve the title but for one thing — he does not mock. In that re- spect he falls far short of his gray cousin, who not only has all the thrasher’s gift of original song, but a most amazing faculty of imitation, as every one knows who has heard even a caged mocking- bird running over the medley of notes he has picked up here and there and carefully rehearsed and remembered. The thrasher’s song is a med- ley, but not a medley of imitations. I have said that the thrasher keeps near the ground. Such is his habit; but there is one exception. When he sings he takes the very top of a tree, although usually it is not a tall one. There he stands by the half-hour together, head up and tail down, pouring out a flood of music; sounds of all sorts, high notes and low notes, smooth notes and rough notes, all jum- bled together in the craziest fashion, as if the musician were really beside himself. BROWN THRASHER 1, 2,3. Males. 4. Female THE BROWN THRASHER 17 It is a performance worth buying a ticket for and going miles to hear; but it is to be heard without price on the outskirts of almost any vil- lage in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains and south of Maine. You must go out at the right time, however, for the bird sings but a few weeks in the year, although he remains in New England almost six months, or till the middle of October. He is one of the birds that every one should know, since it is perfectly easy to identify him ; and once known, he is never to be forgotten, or to be confounded with anything else. The thrasher’s nest is a rude, careless-looking structure, made of twigs, roots, and dry leaves, and is to be looked for on the ground, or in a bush not far above it. Often it has so much the appearance of a last year’s affair that one is tempted to pass it as unworthy of notice. I have been fooled in that way more than once. The bird sits close, as the saying is, and as she stares at you with her yellow eyes, full at once of courage and fear, you will need a hard heart to disturb her. Sometimes she will really show fight, and she has been known to drive a small boy off the field. Her whistle after she has been frightened from her eggs or nestlings is one of the most pathetic sounds in nature. I 18 EVERYDAY BIRDS should feel sorry for the boy who could hear it without pity. Besides this mournful whistle, the thrasher has a note almost exactly like a smacking kiss, — very realistic, — and sometimes, especially at dusk, an uncanny, ghostly whisper, that seems meant expressly to suggest the presence of some- thing unearthly and awful. So far as I am aware, there is no other bird-note like it. I have no doubt that many a superstitious person has taken to his heels on hearing it from the bushes along a lonesome roadside after nightfall. Except in the spring, indeed, there is little about the thrasher’s appearance or behavior to suggest pleasant thoughts. To me, at any rate, he seems a creature of chronic low spirits. The world has used him badly, and he cannot get over it. He is almost the only bird I ever see without a little inspiration of cheerfulness. Per- haps I misjudge him. Let my young readers make his acquaintance on their own account, if they have not already done so, and find him a livelier creature than I have described him, if they can. V THE BUTCHER-BIRD “ BUTCHER-BIRD ”’ is not a very pretty name, but it is expressive and appropriate, and so is likely to stick quite as long as the more bookish word “ shrike,” which is the bird’s other title. It comes from its owner’s habit of impaling the carcasses of its prey upon thorns, as a butcher hangs upon a hook the body of a pig or other animal that he has slaughtered. In a place like the Public Garden of Boston, if a shrike happens to make it his hunting-ground for a week. or two, you may find here and there in the hawthorn-trees the body of a mouse or the headless trunk of an English sparrow spitted upon a thorn. Grasshoppers are said to be treated in a similar manner, but I have never met with the bird’s work in the grasshopper season. The shrike commonly seen in the Northern States is a native of the far north, and comes down to our latitude only in cold weather. He travels singly, and if he finds a place to suit him, a place where the living is good, he will often 20 EVERYDAY BIRDS remain almost in the same spot for weeks together. In size and appearance he resembles the mock- ingbird. His colors are gray, black, and white, — his tail is long, and his bill is hooked like a hawk’s. He likes a perch from which he can see a good distance about him. A telegraph wire answers his purpose very well, but his commonest seat is the very tip of a tallish tree. If you look across a field in winter and descry a medium-sized bird swaying on the topmost twig of a lonesome tree, balancing himself by continual tiltings of his long tail, you may set him down as most likely a butcher-bird. His flight is generally not far from the ground, but as he draws near the tree in which he means to alight, he turns suddenly upward. It would be surprising to see him alight on one of the lower branches, or anywhere, indeed, except at the topmost point. Small birds are all at once scarce and silent when the shrike appears. Sometimes in his hunger he will attack a bird heavier than hin- self. I had once stopped to look at a flicker in a roadside apple-tree, when I suddenly noticed a butcher-bird not far off. At the same moment, as it seemed, the butcher-bird caught sight of the flicker, and made a swoop toward him. The s? THE BUTCHER-BIRD 21 flicker, somewhat to my surprise, showed no sign of panic, or even of fear. He simply moved aside, as much as to say, “ Oh, stop that! Don’t bother me!” How the affair would have re- sulted, I cannot tell. To my regret, the shrike at that moment seemed to become aware of a man’s presence, and flew away, leaving the woodpecker to pursue his exploration of the apple-tree at his leisure. The shrike has a very curious habit of singing, or of trying to sing, in the disjointed manner of a catbird. I have many times heard him thus engaged, and can bear witness that some of his tones are really musical. Some people have sup- posed that at such times he is trying to decoy small birds, but to me the performance has al- ways seemed like music, or an attempt at music, rather than strategy. Southern readers may be presumed to be fa- miliar with another shrike, known as the logger- head. As I have seen him in Florida he is a very tame, unsuspicious creature, nesting in the shade- trees of towns. The “French mocking-bird,” a planter told me he was called. Mr. Chapman has seen one fly fifty yards to catch a grasshop- per which, to all appearance, he had sighted before quitting his perch. The power of flight is not the only point as to which birds have the advantage of human beings. VI THE SCARLET TANAGER WueEn I began to learn the birds, I was living in a large city. One of the first things I did, after buying a book, was to visit a cabinet of mounted specimens —“ stuffed birds,” as we often call them. Such a wonderful and confus- ing variety as there was to my ignorant eyes! Among them I remarked especially a gorgeous scarlet creature with black wings and a black tail. It was labeled the scarlet tanager. So far as I was concerned, it could not have looked more foreign if it had come from Borneo. My book told me that it was common in Massachusetts. It might be, I thought, but I had never seen it there. And a bird so splendid as that! Bright enough to set the woods on fire! How could I have missed it ? Well, there came a Saturday, with its half- holiday for clerks, and 1 went-into the country, where I betook myself to the woods of my native village, the woods wherein I had rambled all the years of my boyhood. And that afternoon, be- SCARLET TANAGER 1. Male. 2. Female THE SCARLET TANAGER 23 fore I came out of them, I put my opera-glass on two of those wonderful scarlet and black birds. It was a day to be remembered. Since that time, of course, I have seen many like them. In one sense, their beauty has become to me an old story; but I hope that I have set here and there a reader on a hunt that has been as happily rewarded as mine was on that bright summer afternoon. In one respect, the beginner has a great advantage over an old hand. He has the pleasure of more excitement and surprise. The bird to be looked for is a little longer than a bluebird, of a superb scarlet color except for its wings and tail, which, as I have said, are jet- black. Ispeak of the male in full spring costume. His mate does not show so much as a red feather, but is greenish yellow, or yellowish green, with dark — not black — wings and tail. You may see the tanager once in a while in the neighborhood of your house, if the grounds are set with shade-trees, but for the most part he lives in woods, especially in hard woods of a fairly old growth. One of the first things for you to do, with him as with all birds, is to acquaint yourself with his call-notes and his song. The call is of two syl- lables, and sounds like chip-chirr. It is easily remembered after you have once seen the bird in 24 EVERYDAY BIRDS the act of uttering it. The song is much in the manner of the robin’s, but less smooth and flow- ing. I have often thought, and sometimes said, that it is just such a song as the robin might give us if he were afflicted with what people call a“ hoarse cold.” The bird sings as if his whole heart were engaged, but at the same time in a noticeably broken and short-winded style. The oftener you hear him, the easier you will find it to distinguish him from a robin, although at first you may find yourself badly at a loss. A boy that can tell any one of twenty playmates by the tones of his voice alone will need nothing but practice and attention to do the same for a great part of the sixty or seventy kinds of com- mon birds living in the woods and fields about him. The tanager’s nest is built in a tree, on the flat of a level branch, so to speak, generally toward the end. Sometimes, at any rate, it is a surprisingly loose, carelessly constructed thing, through the bottom of which one can see the blue or bluish eggs while standing on the ground underneath. It must be plain to any one that the mother bird, in her dull greenish dress, is much less easily seen, and therefore much less in danger, as she sits brooding, than she would be if she wore THE SCARLET TANAGER 25 the flaming scarlet feathers that render her mate so handsome. Southern readers will know also another kind of tanager, not red and black, but red all over. He, too, is a great beauty, although if the ques- tion were left to me, I could not give him the palm over his more northern relative. The red of the southern bird is of a different shade — “rose-red ” or “ vermilion,” the books call it. He sings like the scarlet tanager, but in a smoother voice. Although he is a red bird, he is not to be confounded with the southern red- bird. The latter, better known as the cardinal grosbeak, is a thick-billed bird of the sparrow and finch family. He is frequently seen in cages, and is a royal whistler. The scarlet tanager—the male in red and black plumage — is not to be mistaken for any- thing else in the Eastern States. Once see him, and you will always know him. For that reason he is an excellent subject for the beginner. He passes the winter in Central or South America, and returns to New England in the second week of May. He makes his appearance in full dress, but later in the season changes it for one resem- bling pretty closely the duller plumage of his mate. VII THE SONG SPARROW SPARROWS are of many kinds, and in a gen- eral way the different kinds look so much alike that the beginner in bird study is apt to find them confusing, if not discouraging. They will try his patience, no matter how sharp and clever he may think himself, and unless he is much cleverer than the common run of humanity, he will make a good many mistakes before he gets to the end of them. One of the best and commonest of them all is the song sparrow. His upper parts are mottled, of course, since he is a sparrow. His light- colored breast is sharply streaked, and in the middle of it the streaks usually run together and form a blotch. His outer tail-feathers are not white, and there is no yellow on the wings or about the head. These last points are mentioned in order to distinguish him from two other spar- rows with streaked breasts — the vesper sparrow and the savanna. By the middle of March song sparrows reach —F a mr pie ; , s x oy mE.