CEDAR-UIKlJ
 
 THE FIRST BOOK 
 OF BIRDS 
 
 BY OLIVE THORNE MILLER 
 
 WITH EIGHT COLORED AND TWELVE 
 
 PLAIN PLATES AND TWENTY 
 
 FIGURES IN THE 
 
 TEXT 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 SO?)
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY H. M. MILLER 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 QU 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS book is intended to interest young peo- 
 ple in the ways and habits of birds, and to stim- 
 ulate them to further study. It has grown out 
 of my experience in talking to schools. From 
 the youngest kindergarten scholar to boys and 
 girls of sixteen and eighteen, I have never failed 
 to find young people intensely interested so long 
 as I would tell them about how the birds live. 
 
 Some of the results of these talks that have 
 come to my knowledge have been astonishing 
 and far-reaching, such as that of one boy of 
 seven or eight, who persuaded the village boys 
 around his summer home to give up taking eggs 
 and killing birds, and watch them instead, and 
 who was dubbed " Professor " by his eager fol- 
 lowers. The effect has always been to make 
 children love and respect the living bird. 
 
 It has therefore seemed to me that what is 
 needed at first is not the science of ornithology,
 
 iv PREFACE 
 
 however diluted, but some account of the 
 life and habits, to arouse sympathy and interest 
 in the living bird, neither as a target nor as a 
 producer of eggs, but as a fellow-creature whose 
 acquaintance it would be pleasant to make. 
 
 With this purpose in view I have expanded 
 my " Children's Talks " into this little book, to 
 be used as an introduction to one of the most 
 fascinating and delightful of studies. 
 
 I hope it is unnecessary to say that I have 
 been careful to have the latest and the best 
 authorities for the statements made, and I take 
 pleasure in presenting a list of them : 
 
 On Structure : Dr. Elliott Coues, of Washing- 
 ton, D. C. ; Professor Headley, of Haileybury 
 College, England ; Mr. Lucas, Curator of Com- 
 parative Anatomy, of the National Museum. 
 
 On Moulting: Mr. Witmer Stone, of Phila- 
 delphia Academy of Sciences. 
 
 On Color : Professor Newton, of Cambridge 
 University, England. 
 
 On Food : Professor Beal, of Biological Sur- 
 vey, United States Department of Agriculture ; 
 Mr. Forbush, of Massachusetts State Board of 
 Agriculture ; Mr. Forbes, Director Illinois State
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 Laboratory of Natural History ; Dr. C. Hart 
 Merriam, Chief of Biological Survey, United 
 States Department of Agriculture. 
 
 On Migration : Mr. William Brewster, Presi- 
 dent American Ornithologists Union ; Mr. Frank 
 M. Chapman, of American Museum of Natural 
 History, of New York. 
 
 On Sleep : Rev. Leander Keyser ; Mr. J. 
 Newton Basket. 
 
 On Language : Mr. John Burroughs ; Profes- 
 sor Hameric, of Peabody Conservatory of Music 
 of Baltimore ; Mr. Leverett M. Loomis, of Cali- 
 fornia Academy of Sciences. 
 
 OLIVE THORNE MILLER.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 L WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW 1 
 
 II. WHEN THEY COME IN THE SPRING . 3 
 
 THE NESTLING 
 
 HI. THE BIRD'S HOME 9 
 
 IV. THE BABY BIRD 13 
 
 V. HOW HE IS FED 17 
 
 VI. His FIRST SUIT 21 
 
 VII. HOW HE CHANGES HIS CLOTHES . . . . J35 
 
 VIII. His FIRST FLIGHT 29 
 
 IX. His EDUCATION 33 
 
 X. SOME OF HIS LESSONS 37 
 
 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 JUT. THE BIRD'S LANGUAGE 43 
 
 XII. WHAT HE EATS . 48 
 
 XIII. MORE ABOUT HIS FOOD 52 
 
 XIV. WHERE HE SLEEPS 57 
 
 XV. His TRAVELS 61 
 
 XVI. His WINTER HOME . ^ 66 
 
 XVII. His FAMILY AND FRIENDS 70 
 
 XVIII. His KINDNESS TO OTHERS 74 
 
 XIX. His AFFECTIONS 78 
 
 XX. His INTELLIGENCE 83 
 
 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 XXI. His BODY 91 
 
 XXII. His BEAK AND TONGUE 95 
 
 XXIII. His EYES AND EARS 100 
 
 XXIV. His FEET AND LEGS 105 
 
 ,XXV. His WINGS AND TAJ* 109
 
 viii CONTEXTS 
 
 XXVI. His DRESS 114 
 
 XXVTL DIFFERENT COLORED Suns ... .118 
 
 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 XXVUL How HE WORKS FOR us ...... 125 
 
 XXIX. HOW TO ATTRACT HIM ABOUT OUR HOMES . 131 
 
 XXX. How TO STUDY HIM ....... 136 
 
 147
 
 LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CEDAR-BLRD (colored) ...... Frontispiece 
 
 YELLOW-THROATED VlREO AND NEST 4 
 
 AMERICAN GOLDFINCH (colored) 14 
 
 YOUNG WOOD THRUSH 22 
 
 BLACK AND WHITE WARBLER (MALE AND FEMALE) . 26 
 
 BALTIMORE ORIOLE AND NEST (colored) .... 34 
 
 FLICKER 38 
 
 BLUEBIRD (colored) 44 
 
 BLCE JAY 54 
 
 iNDIGOrBIRD 62 
 
 SCARLET TANAGER (colored) 74 
 
 HOUSE WREN 80 
 
 CHEWINK, OR TOWHEE 92 
 
 REDSTARTS (FEMALE ON NEST) (colored) .... 100 
 
 LESSER YELLOWLEGS 106 
 
 CATBIRD 114 
 
 AMERICAN ROBIN (colored) 120 
 
 BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEES 126 
 
 CARDINAL 132 
 
 MEADOWLARK (colored) 140
 
 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW 
 
 BIRDS seem to be the happiest creatures on 
 earth, yet they have none of what we call the 
 comforts of life. 
 
 They have no houses to live in, no beds to 
 sleep on, no breakfast and dinner provided for 
 them. 
 
 This book is to tell something about them; 
 where they live and what they eat, where they 
 sleep, how they get their beautiful dress, and 
 many other things. But no one can tell all 
 about their lives and habits, for no one knows 
 all their ways. 
 
 Men who study dead birds can tell how they 
 are made, how their bones are put together, and 
 how many feathers there are in the wings and tail. 
 Of course it is well to know these things. But
 
 2 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 to see how birds live is much more interesting 
 than to look at dead ones. 
 
 It is pleasant to see how mother birds build 
 their nests, and how they take care of their 
 nestlings. It is charming to see the young ones 
 when they begin to fly, and to know how they 
 are taught to find their food, and to keep out 
 of danger, and to sing, and everything young 
 birds need to know. 
 
 Then when they are grown up, it is interest 
 ing to find out where they go in winter, and 
 why they do not stay with us all the year round. 
 
 One who goes into the field to watch and 
 study their ways will be surprised to find how 
 much like people they act. And after studying 
 living birds, he will never want to kill them. 
 It will seem to him almost like murder.
 
 WHEN THEY COME IN THE SPRING 
 
 IN the long, cold winter of the New England 
 and Middle States, not many birds are usually 
 seen. In the cities there is always the English 
 sparrow, and in the country, now and then a 
 chickadee, or a woodpecker, or a small flock of 
 goldfinches. 
 
 But very early in the spring, long before grass 
 is green, even while snow is on the ground, the 
 birds begin to come. 
 
 Some morning a robin will appear, standing 
 up very straight on a fence or tree, showing his 
 bright red breast and black cap, flirting his tail, 
 and looking as if he were glad to be back in his 
 old home. 
 
 Then perhaps the same day will come the 
 hoarse chack of a blackbird, and two or three will 
 fly over and alight in a big bare tree, looking, it 
 may be, for a good place to build a bird city. 
 
 Soon will be heard the sweet little song of the 
 song sparrow or the bluebird, and then we shall
 
 4 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 know that summer is coming, for these are the 
 first birds of spring. 
 
 Day after day, as the snow melts away and 
 the sunshine grows hotter, more birds will come. 
 One day a catbird or two, another day an oriole 
 in black and gold, and another day a pert little 
 wren. So it will go on, till by the time June 
 comes in, all our birds will be back with us, very 
 busy, hopping around in our bushes and trees, 
 making their nests all about, and singing the 
 whole day long. 
 
 Almost the first thing every bird thinks of, 
 when he comes to us, is making the nest. For 
 summer is the only time in his life that a bird 
 has a home. 
 
 He does not need a house to live in. He 
 cares nothing for a roof to cover him, because 
 when the sun is hot, he has the broad green 
 leaves on the trees to shade him. And when it 
 rains his neat feather coat is like a waterproof 
 that lets the drops run off, leaving him warm 
 and dry under it. 
 
 He does not need a dining-room, because he 
 eats wherever he finds his food, and he wants no 
 kitchen, because he prefers his food raw. 
 
 He has no use for a bedroom, because he can 
 sleep on any twig ; the whole world is his bed- 
 room.
 
 YELLOW-THROATED VIREO AND NEST
 
 WHEN THEY COME IN THE SPRING 5 
 
 He cares nothing for closets and bureaus, 
 because he has only one suit of clothes at a 
 time, and he washes and dries that without tak- 
 ing it off. 
 
 He wants no fire to keep him warm, for when 
 it is too cold he spreads his wings and flies to a 
 warmer place. A bird has really no need of 
 a house, excepting when he is a baby, be- 
 fore his eyes are open, or his feathers have 
 come, or his wings have grown. While he is 
 blind, naked, and hungry, he must have a warm, 
 snug cradle. 
 
 So when the bird fathers and mothers come 
 in the spring the first thing they do is to find 
 good places and build nice cradles, for they are 
 very fond of their little ones. They spend the 
 spring and summer in working for them, keep- 
 ing them warm, feeding them till they are 
 grown up, and then teaching them to fly and to 
 take care of themselves, so that when summer is 
 gone they will be ready to go with the other 
 birds to their winter home.
 
 THE NESTLING
 
 m 
 
 EACH bird mother has her own way of mak- 
 ing the nest, but there is one thing almost all of 
 them try to do, and that is to hide it. 
 
 They cannot put their little homes out in 
 plain sight, as we do our houses, because so 
 many creatures want to rob them. Squirrels 
 and snakes and rats, and some big birds, and 
 cats and many others, like to eat eggs and young 
 birds. 
 
 So most birds try, first of all, to find good 
 hiding-places. Some tiny warblers go to the 
 tops of the tallest trees, and hide the nest among 
 the leaves. Orioles hang the swinging cradle at 
 the end of a branch, where cats and snakes and 
 naughty boys cannot come. Song sparrows 
 tuck the little home in a tuft of weeds, on the 
 ground, and bobolinks hide it in the deep grass. 
 
 After a safe place is found, they have to get 
 something to build of. They hunt all about 
 and gather small twigs, or grass stems, or fine
 
 10 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 rootlets, and pull narrow strips of bark off the 
 grapevines and the birch-trees, or they pick up 
 strings and horsehairs, and many other things. 
 Robins and swallows use mud. 
 
 As they go on building, the mother bird gets 
 inside and turns around and around to make it 
 fit her form, and be smooth and comfortable for 
 her to sit in. 
 
 When a nest is made, it must be lined. Then 
 some birds go to the chicken yard, and pick up 
 feathers, and others find horsehairs. Some of 
 them pull off the soft down that grows on 
 plants, or get bits of wool from the sheep pas- 
 ture, or old leaves from the woods, and make it 
 soft and warm inside. 
 
 Some bird homes are only platforms, where 
 it seems as if the eggs must roll off, and others 
 are deep burrows, or holes in the ground, where 
 no one can get in. Some are dainty baskets 
 hung between two twigs, and others are tiny 
 cups of felt with lichens outside. 
 
 Each species of bird builds in its own way. 
 There are as many different ways to make nests 
 as there are kinds of birds to make them. 
 
 Then after all the trouble birds have taken to 
 build a nest, they seldom use it a second time. 
 If a pair have two broods in a season, they 
 almost always build a new one for each family.
 
 THE BIRD'S HOME 11 
 
 A few birds, such as eagles, owls, and some- 
 times orioles, and others, repair the home and 
 use it again, and woodpeckers sometimes nest in 
 the old holes. But generally, after the young 
 birds have flown, we may be sure the nest will 
 not be wanted again. 
 
 When the nest is finished, the eggs are laid 
 in it, one by one. We aU know how pretty 
 birds' eggs are. Some are snowy white, some 
 are delicate pink, and some blue. Many have 
 tiny dots and specks on them, and a few are 
 covered with queer -looking streaks and lines. 
 But pretty as they are, I think no one would be 
 so cruel as to take them away from the poor 
 little mother, if he remembered that her young 
 ones are inside them, and that she loves them as 
 his own mother loves him. 
 
 I have heard people say that birds do not 
 care for their eggs. Let me tell you what a 
 little chickadee mother did when a man tried to 
 steal the eggs out of her nest. 
 
 The nest was in a hole in an old stump, and 
 the man could not get his hand in, so he had to 
 take them out one at a time with a little scoop. 
 
 At first the mother flew at him and tried to 
 drive him away. Then chickadees and other 
 birds who lived near came to help her. All 
 flew about his face with cries, so that he had to
 
 12 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 use one hand to keep them away from his eyes. 
 But still he went on taking out the eggs. 
 
 At last the little mother was so wild with 
 grief that she dashed into the hole and sat there 
 in the doorway, right before his face. He could 
 not get another egg without hurting her, and he 
 was ashamed to do that. 
 
 This was as brave in the tiny creature as it 
 would be for a human mother to throw herself 
 before a fierce, hungry tiger. Do you think 
 she did not care for her eggs ?
 
 IV 
 
 THE BABY BIRD 
 
 A BABY bird, as you know, always comes out 
 of an egg. And beautiful as these eggs are, 
 they are most interesting when you think that 
 each one holds a tiny bird. 
 
 Eggs are not all alike, of course. One the 
 size of a bean is large enough to hold a hum- 
 mingbird baby, till it is old enough to come 
 out. But the young ostrich needs a shell nearly 
 as big as your head. So there are all sizes of 
 eggs to fit the different sizes of birds. 
 
 If you should break a fresh egg you would 
 not see a bird, for it would not be formed at 
 that time. After the egg is laid in its soft bed, 
 it has to be kept warm for many days, and that 
 is why the mother bird sits on her nest so 
 quietly. She is keeping the eggs warm, so that 
 the little ones will form and grow, till they are 
 as big as the shells can hold. 
 
 While the mother is sitting her mate does all 
 be can to help, though each species has its own
 
 14 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 way. The blue jay brings food to his mate, so 
 that she need not leave the nest at all, and many 
 others do so. But the kingbird father simply 
 watches the nest to protect it while the mother 
 goes for food. A redstart gets into the. nest 
 himself, to keep the eggs warm while his mate is 
 gone, and a goldfinch coaxes his mate to go off 
 with him for a lunch, leaving nest and eggs to 
 take care of themselves. 
 
 Another thing the father birds do is to sing. 
 This is the time when we hear so much bird 
 song. The singers have little to do but to wait, 
 and so they please themselves, and their mates, 
 and us too, by singing a great deal. 
 
 When the little birds begin to be cramped, 
 and find their cradle too tight, they peck at the 
 shell with a sort of tooth that grows on the end 
 of the beak, and is called the " egg tooth." 
 This soon breaks the shell, and they come out. 
 Then the mother or father carefully picks up 
 the pieces of shell, carries them off, and throws 
 them away, leaving only the little ones in the 
 nest. Perhaps you have found these broken 
 shells on the ground sometimes, and could not 
 guess how they came there. When the bird- 
 lings break out of their prison they do not all 
 look the same. Ducks and geese and chickens 
 and quails, and other birds who live on the
 
 AMERICAN GOLDFINCH
 
 THE BABY BIRD 15 
 
 ground, as well as hawks and owls, are dressed 
 in pretty suits of down. They have their eyes 
 open, and the ground birds are ready to run 
 about at once. 
 
 A man who studied birds, once saw a young 
 duck get its first suit of down. He picked up 
 the egg just as the little bird inside was trying 
 to get out. In a few minutes the shell fell 
 apart, and out stepped the duckling on his hand. 
 It seemed to be covered with coarse black hairs, 
 which in a moment began to burst open, one by 
 one, and out of each came a soft fluff of down. 
 So in a few minutes, while the man stood there 
 and held him, the little duck was all covered 
 with his pretty dress. 
 
 But most birds hatched in nests in trees and 
 bushes, like robins and bluebirds, are very dif- 
 ferent. When they come out of their shells 
 they are naked, have their eyes shut, and look 
 as if they were nearly all mouth. A young 
 hummingbird looks about as big as a honey 
 bee, and a robin baby not much bigger than the 
 eggshell he came out of. 
 
 They lie flat down in the nest, seeming to be 
 asleep most of the time. All they want is to be 
 warm and to be fed. 
 
 To keep them warm, the mother sits on them 
 a great part of the time, and for the first few
 
 16 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 days of their lives, the father often brings most 
 of the food. Sometimes he gives it to the 
 mother, and she feeds the little ones. But 
 sometiiMtfjfce gets off the nest, and flies away 
 to T^jHfd get something to eat for herself, 
 wlute he feeds the nestlings, 
 ^rnere is one bird father who it is thought 
 never comes to the nest, either to watch the 
 eggs or to help feed the nestlings. That is our 
 hummingbird, the ruby throat. 
 
 We do not know the reason for this, and it 
 is not fair to say hard things about him until 
 we do. It may be that he thinks his shining 
 ruby would show the hiding-place of the nest, 
 or it may be that the little mother is not willing 
 to have any help. I think this last is the real 
 reason, for she has a great deal of spirit, and 
 always drives away others from her feeding- 
 places. 
 
 Young birds grow very fast, and soon feathers 
 begin to come out all over them. They are not 
 very pretty at this time.
 
 HOW HE IS FED 
 
 SOON after the young bird comes out of the 
 egg, he begins to be hungry. All day long, 
 whenever the father or mother comes near, he 
 opens his great mouth as wide as he can, to have 
 it filled, and the moment he gets his voice he 
 cries for food. 
 
 Then the old birds have to work hard. Three 
 or four hungry nestlings can keep both father 
 and mother busy from morning till night, hunting 
 for caterpillars and beetles and grubs and other 
 things to feed them. It seems as if the little 
 fellows never could get enough to eat. Each 
 swallow baby wants seven or eight hundred small 
 flies every day, and a baby robin needs more 
 earthworms in a day than you can hold in your 
 hand at once. 
 
 At this time you will see robins hunting over 
 the lawn, and carrying great beakfuls of worms 
 up to the nest. Bluebirds you will find looking 
 in the grass, and sparrows hopping about on the
 
 18 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 ground, all seeking soft worms and grubs and 
 insects for the nestlings ; and they are so busy 
 they do not get much time for singing. 
 
 At this time the orioles go all over the or- 
 chard trees looking for tiny worms, and little 
 warblers seek them under every leaf. 
 
 Woodpeckers find the insects hidden behind 
 the bark of trees, by cutting holes through it. 
 Chickadees and nuthatches pick the tiniest insect 
 eggs out of the crevices, and flickers hunt every- 
 where for ants. 
 
 As soon as one of the old birds has his mouth 
 full, he flies to the nest to feed the young. 
 
 But not all birds feed in the same way. A 
 robin just drops a big earthworm, or a part of 
 one, into the gaping baby mouth. Many other 
 birds do so also. Sometimes, when an insect is 
 too big or too hard, they beat it till it is soft, 
 or break it up, before giving it to a little one. 
 
 But hummingbird mothers and flicker mo- 
 thers have a different way. When they collect 
 the food they swallow it, as if they wanted it for 
 themselves. Then they go to the nest, and jerk 
 it up again in mouthfuls, and feed the nestlings. 
 This is called feeding by " regurgitation," or 
 " throwing up." 
 
 The way they give the food is very curious. 
 They push their long beaks into the nestling's
 
 HOW HE IS FED 19 
 
 throat, and poke the food far down ; so the 
 young one does not even have the trouble of 
 swallowing. 
 
 This looks as if it must hurt, but the nestling 
 seems to like it, and is always ready for more. 
 The pigeon mother lets the young one poke his 
 beak down her throat, and get the food for 
 himself. 
 
 If the food is hard, like corn, birds who feed 
 in this way let it stay in the crop till it is soft 
 and better fitted for tender throats, before they 
 give it out. 
 
 It is comical to see a nest full of little birds 
 when the father or mother comes with food. 
 All stretch up and open their big mouths as 
 wide as they can, and if they are old enough, 
 they cry as if they were starving. 
 
 Some birds bring food enough for all in the 
 nest, every time they come. A cedar-bird, feed- 
 ing wild cherries, brought five of them every 
 time, one for each of the five nestlings. One 
 cherry was held in his mouth, but the other 
 four were down his throat, and had to be jerked 
 up one by one. 
 
 Other birds bring only one mouthful at a 
 time, and when there ar^nve or six in the 
 nest, they have to make as many journeys before 
 all are fed.
 
 20 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 Some persons who have studied birds think 
 that each nestling is fed in its turn ; but they 
 look so much alike, and are so close together, 
 that it is hard to tell, and I am not sure that 
 it is so. 
 
 I will tell you a story I have heard about 
 feeding little birds. A child picked up a young 
 goldfinch who had fallen out of the nest. He 
 took him home and put him into the canary's 
 cage, which was hanging on the front porch. 
 
 Soon the family heaqfca great noise among 
 the birds, and went oJfco see what was the 
 matter. The baby goldBich had hopped on to 
 a perch in the cage, and^eemed to be afraid to 
 come down, though the^ old 1 birds had brought 
 food for him, and were calling him to take it. 
 
 The canary looked on a while, and then all at 
 once he flew to the wir^s and took the food from 
 the birds outside; then he went back to the 
 perch beside the little one and gave it to him. 
 This he did many times. 
 
 The next day another young goldfinch was 
 picked up and put in the cage, and the canary 
 took food from the parents and fed both. 
 
 After a few days the old birds came with a 
 third little one, and as all were now old enough 
 to fly, the cage door was opened, and they all 
 flew away.
 
 
 VI 
 
 HIS FIRST SUIT 
 
 SOME birds that live on the ground as I 
 told you have dresses of down to begin with. 
 These little fellows have no warm nest to stay 
 in, but run around almost as soon as they come 
 out of the egg. Young ducks and geese wear 
 this baby suit for weeks, before they begin to put 
 on their feather coats. 
 
 Young birds that spend most of their time in 
 the water, like grebes, and others that live in a 
 cold country, have the down very thick and fine, 
 like heavy underclothes, to keep them dry and 
 warm. 
 
 Birds whose home is underground, like the 
 kingfisher, or in the trunk of a tree, like the 
 woodpecker, have hardly any down at all. They 
 need no baby clothes in their warm cradles. 
 
 Robins and most other song birds have only 
 a little down on them, and very soon the feathers 
 begin to grow. 
 
 When the tiny quills push themselves up, they
 
 22 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 look like little white pins sticking out all over. 
 Each bit of down grows out of a little raised 
 place on the skin that looks like a pimple, and 
 the feather comes out of the same. 
 
 As the feather grows, the bit of down clings 
 to it till it is broken off. Sometimes it holds 
 on till the feather is well out. We can often 
 see down sticking to a young bird's feathers. 
 
 The little feathers grow very fast, and before 
 he is ready to fly a young bird is well covered. 
 Birds hatched with their eyes open, and already 
 dressed, who have to run and fly very soon, get 
 their wing feathers early; but birds who live 
 many days in the nest, like robins and bluebirds, 
 do not get theirs till they are nearly grown. 
 
 The tail feathers are the last to come to full 
 length, and you will notice that most birds just 
 out of the nest have very dumpy tails. 
 
 A bird's first suit of feathers is called his nest- 
 ling plumage. In some families it is just like 
 the dress of the grown-up birds, but in others it 
 is not at all like that. It is usually worn only 
 a few weeks, for the young one outgrows it, 
 and needs a new and bigger one before winter. 
 
 When a bird is fully dressed, his body is en- 
 tirely covered, and it looks as if the feathers 
 grew close to each other all over him. But it is 
 not so. The feathers grow in patterns, called
 
 YOUNG WOD THRUSH
 
 HIS FIRST SUIT 23 
 
 * feather tracts," with spaces of bare skin be- 
 tween them. These bare places do not show, 
 because the feathers lap over each other and 
 cover them. 
 
 The pattern of the feather tracts is not the 
 same in all birds. A few birds of the Ostrich 
 family have feathers all over .the body. 
 
 There is another curious thing about the nest- 
 ling plumage. You would expect a young bird 
 to look like his father or mother ; and some of 
 them do. Many nestlings are dressed exactly 
 like their mothers ; and not until they are a 
 year old do the young males get a coat like their 
 father's. Some of them, indeed, do not have 
 their grown-up suits for two or three years. 
 
 Then, again, many young birds have dresses 
 different from both parents. Young robins have 
 speckled breasts, and spots on the shoulders, 
 which the old birds have not. 
 
 When the father and mother are dressed alike, 
 as the song sparrows are, the young birds gen- 
 erally differ from both of them. When the father 
 and mother are different, like orioles or blue- 
 birds, the young are usually like the mother the 
 first season. In some cases the father, mother, 
 and young are almost exactly alike. 
 
 Birds who live on the ground need dresses of 
 dull colors, or they would not be very safe. The
 
 24 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 ostrich mother, who makes her nest in plain sight 
 on the sand, is dressed in grayish brown. When 
 she sits on the eggs, she lays her long neck flat 
 on the ground before her j then she looks like 
 one of the ant-hills that are common on the 
 plains of Africa, where she lives. 
 
 The South American ostrich, or rhea, fluffs 
 out her feathers and looks like a heap of dry 
 grass. The male ostrich is dressed in showy 
 black and white, and he stays away all day, but 
 takes care of the nest at night, when his striking 
 colors cannot be seen.
 
 vn 
 
 HOW HE CHANGES HIS CLOTHES 
 
 IT takes a bird weeks to put on a new suit of 
 clothes. He has nothing but his feathers to 
 protect him from cold and wet, and as feathers 
 cannot grow out in a minute, he would be left 
 naked, and suffer, if he lost them all at once. So 
 he changes his dress one or two feathers at a 
 time. 
 
 Some day a feather will drop from each wing. 
 If you could look, you would see that new ones 
 had started out in the same place, and pushed 
 the old ones off. When the new ones are pretty 
 well grown another pair will fall out. 
 
 If all dropped out at once, besides suffering 
 with cold he' would not be able to fly, and he 
 could not get his living, and anybody could 
 catch him. But losing only one from each side 
 at a time, he always has enough to fly with. 
 
 It is the same way with his tail feathers. He 
 loses them in pairs, one from each side at the 
 same time.
 
 26 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 The soft feathers that cover his body drop 
 out one by one. Thus all the time he is putting 
 on a new suit he still wears part of the old one. 
 In this way he is never left without clothes for a 
 moment. 
 
 Most birds put on their new suits just after 
 the young ones are grown up, and before they 
 all start for the South to spend the winter, that 
 is, with many of our common birds, in August. 
 At that time they are rather shy, and stop sing- 
 ing. If you did not see one now and then, you 
 might think they were all gone. 
 
 Sometimes the new fall suit is not at all like 
 the old one. There is the goldfinch, all summer 
 in bright yellow. When he comes out in his 
 new suit in August, it is dull-colored, much like 
 the one his mate wears all the year, and in win- 
 ter, when goldfinches fly around in little flocks, 
 they look nearly all alike. 
 
 In the spring, the male goldfinch comes out 
 again in yellow. He has two suits a year, a 
 bright yellow one in the spring, and a dull olive- 
 green for the winter. But his new spring dress 
 is not a full suit. The yellow of the body is all 
 fresh, but the black wings are the same the year 
 round. 
 
 Some birds have two, different colored dresses 
 b a year; one they get without changing a
 
 BLACK AND WHITE WARBLERS (MALE AND FEMALE)
 
 HOW HE CHANGES HIS CLOTHES 27 
 
 feather. Suppose they have feathers of black, 
 with gray on the outside edges. All winter the 
 gray shows and the birds seem to have gray 
 coats. But in spring the gray edges wear or fall 
 off, and the black shows, and then they look as 
 if they had come out in new black suits. It is 
 as if you should take off a gray overcoat and 
 show a black coat under -it. 
 
 There is another interesting thing about birds' 
 dress. Some of them look like their mates, the 
 father and mother birds so nearly alike that it is 
 hard, sometimes impossible, to tell them apart. 
 But when that is the case, you will notice that 
 the color is not very gay. If the father wears a , 
 bright-colored suit, the mother does not look likqr 
 him. 
 
 For this reason the little mother is not too easily 
 seen when she is on her nest. If the goldfinch 
 mother were as bright as her mate, everybody 
 who came near would see her on the nest, and 
 some animal might take her, and leave the young 
 birds to starve to death. That is probably why 
 mother birds dress in such dull colors. 
 
 When birds live on the ground, or very near 
 it, in most cases both of the pair wear the dull 
 colors, so they will not easily be seen. Wrens 
 and sparrows and many others are so. But birds 
 who make their nests in holes, or under ground,
 
 28 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 are often as bright as their mates, because they 
 cannot be seen while sitting, and do not need to 
 wear dull colors. 
 
 A curious thing about a bird's color is that 
 the same species, or kind of bird, is darker in 
 one place than another. Where there is much 
 dampness or wet weather, the colors are darker. 
 For instance, a bob-white who lives in Florida, 
 or one who lives in Oregon, will be much darker 
 than his cousin living in New England.
 
 vm 
 
 HIS FIRST FLIGHT 
 
 WHEN young birds are in the nest they are 
 not very pretty. But when they are nearly 
 feathered, and sit up on the edge, exercising 
 their wings, and getting ready to fly, they are 
 lovely to look at. Their feathers are more fluffy 
 and fresh than those of the old birds. 
 
 At that time they have not learned to be afraid 
 of us, and if we do not frighten them by rough- 
 ness, loud talking, or quick movements, we can 
 often get near enough to see them well. They 
 will sit up and look at us without fear. 
 
 Then some day, all at once, a young bird will 
 begin to flap his wings, and off he will go, flut- 
 tering very hard, beating his wings, and trying 
 to reach the next tree. 
 
 Sometimes he will reach it, and perch on a 
 twig, and sit quite still a long time, tired with 
 his first flight. Then the parents will come and 
 feed him, and after a while he will fly again. 
 This time he will go farther.
 
 30 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 So he will go on, till in a few days he can fly 
 very well, and follow his parents about, and begin 
 to learn where to get food. 
 
 Sometimes when a young bird leaves the nest 
 he does not reach the tree he starts for, but falls 
 to the ground. Then there is trouble among 
 the birds. He is in danger of being picked up 
 by a cat or a boy, or of getting tangled in the 
 grass or weeds. 
 
 The poor parents are half wild with fear. They 
 coax him to try again, and they follow him about 
 in the grass, in great distress. I have many 
 times picked up a little bird, and set him on a 
 branch of a tree, or stood guard over him, driv- 
 ing away cats and keeping off people, till he 
 reached a place where he would be safe. 
 
 When young birds are out, but cannot yet 
 fly very well, there is much anxiety about them. 
 Then, if any one comes around to disturb them, 
 what can the poor little mother do ? Sometimes 
 she makes her young ones hide. Some of the 
 birds who live on the ground will give a certain 
 cry, when in a second every little one will crouch 
 on the ground, or creep under a leaf, and be per- 
 fectly still. And their dark colors look so like 
 the earth one can hardly see them. 
 
 Then the mother tries to make one look at 
 her by queer antics. She pretends to be hurt,
 
 HIS FIRST FLIGHT 31 
 
 and tumbles about as if she could not fly. If it 
 is a man or an animal who has frightened her, 
 he will usually think he can easily catch her ; 
 so he will forget about the young ones, and fol- 
 low her as she goes fluttering over the ground. 
 She will go on playing that she is hurt, and 
 moving away, till she leads him far from her 
 brood. Then she will start up and fly away, 
 and he cannot find his way back to where the 
 little ones are still crouching. 
 
 Sometimes when a mother is frightened, she 
 will snatch up her young one between her feet, 
 and fly away with it. Sometimes a mother will 
 fight, actually fly into the face of the one she 
 fears. Often, too, other birds come to her aid ; 
 birds of many kinds, catbirds, robins, thrash- 
 ers, and others, all come to help her drive 
 away the enemy, for birds are almost always 
 ready to help each other. 
 
 I once found a young blue jay who had come 
 to the ground while trying his first flight. I 
 thought I would pick him up and put him on a 
 branch. But the old birds did not know what I 
 meant to do, and perhaps they were afraid I 
 would carry him off. 
 
 They flew at me with loud cries to drive me 
 away, and I thought it best to go, for I did not 
 want to make them any more unhappy than they 
 were already.
 
 32 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 I did not go far, because I wanted to see 
 that no one caught the little one. He hopped 
 about in the grass a long time, while his parents 
 flew around him in great distress. Many times 
 he tried to fly, but he could not rise more than 
 two feet from the ground. 
 
 At last he seemed to make up his mind to 
 climb a tree, for when he came to one with a 
 rough bark he began to go up. He would fly 
 up a few inches, then hold on with his claws to 
 rest. And so, half flying and half climbing, he 
 went on till he reached the lowest limb. On 
 that he perched and was quiet, glad to rest after 
 his hard work. The old birds were happy, too, 
 and brought food to him, and so I left them.
 
 IX 
 
 HIS EDUCATION 
 
 THE young bird has to be educated, or trained 
 for his life, just as we do, though not exactly 
 in the same way. 
 
 He does not have to know arithmetic and 
 history ; and what he needs of geography is 
 only the road to the South, where he spends his 
 winters. 
 
 I suppose the first thing he learns is to fly. 
 You have heard, perhaps, that the old birds 
 drive their young out of the nest. But do not 
 believe any such thing, for it is not true. I 
 have seen many little birds leave the nest, and 
 almost every one flew when the parents were 
 away after food. 
 
 The parents sometimes try to coax a nestling 
 who is afraid to try his wings, like an oriole I 
 knew of. All the young orioles had flown 
 except this one, and he seemed to be too timid 
 to try. He stood on the edge of the nest, and 
 called and cried, but did not use his wings.
 
 34 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 The father came to see him now and then, and 
 at last he made him fly in this way. He caught 
 a fine, large moth, and brought it to the nest in 
 his beak. The young bird was very hungry, 
 and when he saw the food, he opened his mouth 
 and fluttered his wings, so eager to get it he 
 eould hardly wait. 
 
 But the parent did not feed him. He let him 
 see the moth, and then, with a loud call, he 
 flew to the next tree. "When the little oriole 
 saw the food going away, he forgot he was 
 afraid, and with a cry of horror he sprang after 
 it ; and so, before he knew it, he had flown. 
 
 After the young bird can fly, he needs to be 
 taught to get his own living, or to find his own 
 food, and also where to sleep. Then he must 
 learn what to be afraid of, and how to protect 
 himself from his enemies. 
 
 He needs to know the different calls and cries 
 of his family, and what they all mean. He has 
 to learn to fly in a flock with other birds, and 
 he must learn to sing. No doubt there are many 
 more lessons for him that we do not know 
 about. 
 
 If you watch little birds just out of the nest, 
 you may see them being taught the most useful 
 and important lesson, how to find their food. 
 
 The robin mother takes her little one to the
 
 BALTIMORE ORIOLE AND NEST
 
 HIS EDUCATION 35 
 
 ground, and shows him where the worms live 
 and how to get them. The owl mother finds a 
 mouse creeping about in the grass, and teaches 
 the owlets how to pounce upon it, by doing it 
 herself before them. 
 
 The old swallow takes her youngsters into the 
 air, and shows them how to catch little flies on 
 the wing ; while mother phrebe teaches hers to 
 sit still and watch till a fly comes near, and then 
 fly out and catch it. 
 
 If you watch long enough, after a while you 
 may see the old bird, who is training a young 
 one, fly away. She may leave the young one 
 alone on a tree or the ground, and be gone a 
 long time. 
 
 Before many minutes the little one will get 
 hungry, and begin to call for food. But by 
 and by, if nobody comes to feed him, he will 
 think to look around for something to eat. 
 Thus he will get his lesson in helping himself. 
 
 Once I saw a woodpecker father bring his 
 little one to a fence, close by some raspberry 
 bushes that were full of berries. He fed him 
 two or three berries, to teach him what they 
 were and where they grew, and then quietly 
 slipped away. 
 
 When the young bird began to feel hungry 
 he cried out j but nobody came. Then he looked
 
 86 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 over at the raspberries, and reached out and 
 tried to get hold of one. After trying three or 
 four times, and nearly pitching off his perch, he 
 did reach one. Then how proud he was ! 
 
 The father stayed away an hour er more, and 
 before he came back that young woodpecker 
 had learned to help himself very well ; though 
 the minute his father came, he began to flutter 
 his wings and beg to be fed, as if he were half 
 starved. 
 
 A lady, who fed the wild birds on her window 
 sill for many years, and watched their ways, says 
 she often saw the old birds teaching their little 
 ones. They showed them where the food was 
 to be found, and, she says, regularly taught 
 them the art of eating. 
 
 Then she saw them taught to be afraid of 
 people, not to come too near her. And once she 
 saw an old bird showing a young one how to 
 gather twigs for nest-building. The young one 
 looked on a while, and then tried hard to do it 
 himself, but could not get off a single twig. 
 
 Best of all, the same lady heard an old robin 
 giving a music lesson. The teacher would sing 
 a few notes and then stop, while the pupil tried 
 to copy them. He had a weak, babyish sort of 
 voice, and did not succeed very well at first. 
 
 I have heard several birds at their music les- 
 sons.
 
 SOME OF HIS LESSONS 
 
 IT is very easy to catch the birds teaching 
 their little ones to exercise their wings and to 
 fly together. You will see the young birds 
 sitting quietly on fences or trees, when all at 
 once the parents begin to fly around, with 
 strange loud calls. In a minute every young- 
 ster will fly out and join them. Around and 
 around they all go, hard as they can, till their 
 little wings are tired, and then they come down 
 and alight again. 
 
 Once I saw a young bird who did not go 
 when his parents called. All the others flew 
 around many times, and I suppose that young 
 one thought he would not be noticed. 
 
 But mothers' eyes are sharp, and his mother 
 saw him. So when she came back, she flew 
 right at her naughty son, and knocked him off 
 his perch. The next time she called, he flew 
 with the rest. This was a crow mother. 
 
 I have seen a bluebird just out of the nest,
 
 38 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 taught to follow his father in this way. He 
 stood on a small tree, crying for something to 
 eat, when his father came in sight with a beak- 
 ful of food. He did not feed him, but flew 
 past him, so close that he almost touched him, 
 and alighted on the next tree, a little beyond 
 him. 
 
 The little bluebird saw the food, and at once 
 flew after it, perched beside his father, and was 
 fed. Then the old bird left him, and in a few 
 minutes he felt hungry, and began to call 
 again. 
 
 I kept close watch, and soon the father came 
 and did the same thing over. He flew past the 
 young one with an insect in plain sight in his 
 beak, and perched on another tree still farther 
 along in the way he wanted the little one to go. 
 
 The hungry baby followed, and was fed as 
 before. In this way he was led to a big tree 
 the other side of the yard, where the rest of 
 the family were, and where they all spent the 
 night. 
 
 An old robin wanted to teach her young one 
 to bathe. She brought him to a dish of water 
 kept for their use by some people who were 
 fond of birds. The little one stood on the edge 
 and watched his mother go in, and splash and 
 scatter the water. He fluttered his wings, and
 
 FLICKER
 
 SOME OF HIS LESSONS 39 
 
 was eager to try it for himself, but seemed afraid 
 to plunge in. 
 
 At last the mother flew away and left him 
 standing there, and in a moment came back 
 with a worm in her mouth. The young robin 
 was hungry, as young birds always are, and 
 when he saw the worm, he began to flutter his 
 wings, and cry for it. 
 
 But the mother jumped into the middle of 
 the water dish, and stood there, holding the 
 worm in his sight. The youngster wanted the 
 worm so much that he seemed to forget his fear 
 of the water, and hopped right in beside her. 
 She fed him, and then began to splash about, 
 and he liked it so well that he stayed and took 
 a good bath. 
 
 Birds, as these stories show, teach their little 
 ones by coaxing, and not by driving them. 
 
 An Englishman, Mr. Lloyd Morgan, once 
 had some ducks and chickens hatched away from 
 their mother, to see how much their parents had 
 to teach them. 
 
 He found that these little orphans had to be 
 taught to pick up their food, and to know what 
 is good to eat. He had to show the young 
 ducks how to dive, and teach all of them that 
 water is good to drink. 
 
 To see if chickens had to be taught the hen
 
 40 THE FIRST BOOK OF BIRDS 
 
 language, he put them out by their mother 
 when they were a few days old. 
 
 The hen was going about with her brood, all 
 brothers and sisters of Mr. Morgan's chicks, 
 and she was quite ready to adopt the new ones. 
 She clucked and called to them with all her 
 might, but they did not come. They acted as 
 if they did not hear her. When the others ran 
 and crept under her wings to be brooded, the 
 strangers looked on, but did not think of going 
 too. 
 
 They did not understand the calls or the 
 ways of their own mother. They had not been 
 taught. 
 
 A careful watcher will see the birds teach 
 these things, and many others as interesting. 
 But no one will see anything unless he is quiet, 
 and does not frighten them.
 
 THE BIRD GROWN UP
 
 XI 
 
 THE BIRD'S LANGUAGE 
 
 WHEN the bird is grown up, there are many 
 other interesting things to know about him, 
 one is, whether he can talk. 
 
 It is plain to those who have studied the ways 
 of birds, that they are able to tell things to each 
 other, and many writers have said plainly that 
 birds have a language. 
 
 If you notice birds in cages, you will find that 
 when two or more of a kind are in the same 
 room, you will hear little chirps and twitters 
 and other notes, not at all like their song. But 
 if one is alone in a room, he hardly makes a 
 soun^d except when singing. 
 
 Then see a robin out of doors. He is less 
 afraid of us than most birds, and easiest to 
 watch. If something comes up on him sud- 
 denly, he gives a sharp note of surprise. If a 
 cat appears, he has another cry which every one 
 can understand, a word of warning to all. If 
 everything is quiet and his mate is near, he will 
 greet her with some low, sweet notes.
 
 44 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 When a partridge mother sees danger, she 
 gives one call, -which all her brood know, and at 
 once run and hide. When the hen speaks to 
 her chicks, they know well whether it means to 
 come to her, or to run away. 
 
 Of course birds do not use our words. When 
 it is said that the quail says " Bob White," it is 
 meant that his call sounds like those words. 
 To some the notes sound like " more wet." One 
 may call it almost anything, like " all right " or 
 too hot." 
 
 You will read in books about birds, that a 
 certain warbler says "Witches here," or that 
 the white- throated sparrow says " Old Sam Pea- 
 body," and other birds say still different things. 
 The writer means that the words remind one of 
 the bird's notes, and so it is useful to know 
 them, because it helps you to know the bird 
 when you hear him. 
 
 I have many times seen birds act as if they 
 were talking to each other. You can often see 
 the city sparrows do so. 
 
 There is nothing in a bird's ways that we like 
 so well as his singing. And in all the many 
 species of birds in the world, no two sing exactly 
 alike, so far as I can find out. You may always 
 know a bird by his song. A robin does not 
 sing like a thrush or a catbird. And what is
 
 THE BIRD'S LANGUAGE 45 
 
 more, not one of the sounds he utters is like 
 those made by any other bird. If you know 
 him well, whatever noise he makes, you will 
 know at once that it is a robin. 
 
 But there is something still more curious 
 about it. No robin sings exactly like another 
 robin. When you come to know one bird well, 
 you can tell his song from any other bird's. Of 
 course, all robins sing enough alike for one to 
 know that it is a robin song, but if you listen 
 closely, you will see that it is really different 
 from all others. 
 
 Persons who have kept birds in cages have 
 noticed the same thing. 
 
 There is still another point to know. One 
 bird does not always sing the same song. I 
 have heard a song sparrow sing five or six differ- 
 ent songs, standing all the time in plain sight on 
 a fence. In the same way I have known a mea- 
 dowlark to make six changes in his few notes. 
 
 Besides their own natural songs, many birds 
 like to copy the notes of others. Our mocking- 
 bird is very fond of learning new things, and he 
 does not always choose songs either. 
 
 He will imitate the noise of filing a saw, or the 
 pop of a cork, as readily as the sweetest song. 
 I have heard one sing the canary's song better 
 than the canary himself.
 
 46 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 Other birds can do the same. A common 
 English sparrow picked up in the streets of a 
 big city, hurt, and not able to fly, was put into 
 a room with a canary. 
 
 No doubt the wild bird found his life in a 
 cage rather dull, after having been used to the 
 streets, and he soon began to amuse himself try- 
 ing to do as the canary did, to sing. In a few 
 weeks he learned the whole song, and he could 
 sing it even better than his roommate, for his 
 voice was full and rich, and not so shrill as the 
 canary's. 
 
 Most people think that birds sing all summer. 
 They think so because they have not taken 
 notice. We who are very fond of bird song 
 know it is not so. 
 
 Singing begins when the birds first come in 
 the spring. It goes on while the nest is being 
 built, and the mother bird is sitting. The 
 father has little to do at that time, and so he 
 sings. And besides, he seems to be so happy 
 that he cannot help it. 
 
 But when little ones begin to call for food, 
 he has to be very busy, and does not have so 
 much time for music. Some birds stop singing 
 as soon as they go to feeding. 
 
 But not all do so. Many go on singing till 
 they begin to change their clothes, or to moult,
 
 THE BIRD'S LANGUAGE 47 
 
 as it is called. This happens in August or 
 September, and when it begins, a bird seems to 
 lose his voice. 
 
 One of the first to stop singing is the bobo- 
 link. He is rarely heard after June is past. 
 The veery is another whose singing days are 
 over early. You may hear his call in the woods, 
 if you know it, but not a song will you hear 
 after the middle of July. 
 
 By the time August comes in, almost every 
 bird is silent, except for his calls or "talk." 
 The birds to be heard then are the red-eyed 
 vireo, who seems never to tire, and now and 
 then the indigo-bird, or the wood pewee, and 
 best of all, the dear little song sparrow, who 
 keeps up his cheery songs till the very last. 
 
 Then you will know that all the birds are 
 busy putting on their new suits for their long 
 journey.
 
 xn 
 
 WHAT HE EATS 
 
 WHAT the bird eats and where he gets his 
 food are useful things for us to know. It has 
 only lately been found out that birds are the 
 most valuable of helpers to us. 
 
 What we cannot eat ourselves, they are happy 
 to live on, and things that make us a great deal 
 of trouble are their daily food. 
 
 Some of the things they are fond of are 
 little animals, like mice and ground squirrels, 
 that eat our crops. Others are insects which 
 spoil our fruit and eat up our vegetables, canker- 
 worms and cutworms, and a hundred more. 
 
 Besides these, many birds eat the seeds of cer- 
 tain weeds that farmers have to fight all the 
 tune. 
 
 One reason this helps us so greatly is that 
 birds eat much more for their size than we do. 
 A boy of six or eight years could not possibly 
 eat a whole sheep in one day, but a young bird 
 can easily eat more than his own weight every 
 day.
 
 WHAT HE EATS 4f 
 
 They want more than three meals too. They 
 need to eat very often. One catbird will take 
 thirty grasshoppers for his breakfast, and in a 
 few hours he will want thirty more. So he de- 
 stroys a great many in a day. 
 
 Birds begin eating long before we are out of 
 bed, and keep it up till night comes again, or as 
 long as they can see. 
 
 You must not think the birds are greedy, as 
 a person would be if he ate every few minutes 
 all day. They are made to do so. It is their 
 business to destroy insects, small animals, and 
 weeds that trouble us so much, and the more 
 they eat the better for us. 
 
 Let us see where they go for food. Each 
 bird has his own place to work. 
 
 The catbird watches the fruit-trees, and all 
 day long eats insects that are spoiling our fruit 
 or killing the trees. When the cherries are 
 ripe, we should not forget that he has saved the 
 fruit from insects, and has well earned a share 
 for himself. 
 
 If you spent days and weeks picking off in- 
 sects, would you not think you had earned part 
 of the fruit ? " For every cherry he eats " (says 
 a man who has watched him), " he has eaten at 
 least one thousand insects." 
 
 The robin eats great numbers of canker-
 
 50 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 worms, which destroy our apples, and cutworms, 
 which kill the corn. 
 
 The bluebird sits on the fence keeping sharp 
 watch, and every few minutes flies down and 
 picks up a grasshopper or a cricket, or some 
 such grass-eating insect. 
 
 Woodpeckers hunt over the trunks and limbs 
 of trees. They tap on the bark and listen, and 
 if they hear a grub stir inside, they cut a hole 
 in the bark and drag it out. The downy is 
 fond of insects that infest our apple-trees, and 
 he makes many holes in the trunks. But it 
 does not hurt the trees. It is good for them, 
 for it takes away the creatures that were eating 
 them. 
 
 Orioles go over the fruit-trees, and pick out 
 tiny insects under the leaves, and when they 
 find great nests on the branches, they tear them 
 open and kill the caterpillars that made them. 
 
 Little warblers, such as the pretty summer 
 yellow-bird, help to keep our trees clear, doing 
 most of their work in the tops, where we can 
 hardly see them. 
 
 Swallows fly about in the air, catching mos- 
 quitoes and tiny flies that trouble us. 
 
 Very useful to us are the birds who feed 
 upon dead animals, such as the turkey buzzards, 
 who may be seen any day in our Southern
 
 WHAT HE EATS 51 
 
 States, soaring about high in the air, looking 
 for their food. 
 
 What they eat is so very unpleasant to us 
 that we are apt to despise the birds. But we 
 should cherish and feel grateful to them in- 
 stead. For they are doing us the greatest kind- 
 ness. In many of the hot countries people 
 could not live, if these most useful birds were 
 killed. 
 
 Some persons think buzzards find their food 
 by seeing it, and others are just as sure that 
 they smell it. Perhaps they use both senses.
 
 54 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 The goldfinch is called the thistle -bird, be* 
 cause he likes best the seeds of thistles, though 
 he eats the beggar's-ticks too. 
 
 The chipping sparrow, the little red-headed 
 bird who comes about our doors, eats the seeds 
 of fox-tail and crab grasses, that spoil our lawns. 
 
 The white-throated sparrow, a large and very 
 pretty bird, eats the seeds of smartweed and 
 ragweed. Other finches like bittersweet, sorrel, 
 and amaranth, all of which we are glad to have 
 them eat. 
 
 The seed-eating birds can find their food in 
 winter, even when snow covers the ground, be- 
 cause the dead weeds hold on to their seeds, and 
 the snow is not often deep enough to cover 
 them. 
 
 Some birds gather their food in the fall, and 
 hide it away where they can find it in winter. 
 Blue jays collect acorns and beech-nuts, and 
 store them in a hole in a tree, or some other 
 safe place, to eat when food is scarce. A wood- 
 pecker who lives in the West picks holes in the 
 bark of a tree, and puts an acorn into each one. 
 
 The oddest store I know of was made by a 
 woodpecker. He found a long crack in a post, 
 and stuffed it full of live grasshoppers. He did 
 not like dead grasshoppers. He wedged them 
 into the crack so tightly that they could not get
 
 BLUE JAY
 
 MORE ABOUT HIS FOOD 55 
 
 out, and I do not know that they wanted to. 
 When grasshoppers were scarce in the fields, he 
 came day after day to his queer storehouse, till 
 he had eaten every one. 
 
 One of the woodpecker family who lives in 
 Mexico stores nuts and acorns in the stems of 
 plants. These stems are hollow and made in 
 joints like bamboo. The bird cuts a hole at the 
 upper end of a joint, and stuffs it full. When 
 he wants his nuts, he cuts a hole at the lower 
 end of the joint and pulls them out. 
 -~I once had a tame blue jay, who was fond of 
 saving what he could not eat, and putting it 
 safely away. The place he seemed to think 
 most secure was somewhere about me, and he 
 would come slyly around me as I sat at work, 
 and try to hide his treasure about my clothes. 
 
 When it was a dried currant or bit of bread, 
 I did not care ; but when he came on to my 
 shoulder, and tried to tuck a dead meal worm 
 into my hair or between my lips, or a piece of 
 raw beef under a ruffle or in my ear, I had to 
 decline to be used as a storehouse, much to his 
 grief. 
 
 He liked to put away other things as well as 
 food. Matches he seemed to think were made 
 for him to hide. His chosen place for them was 
 between the breadths of matting on the floor.
 
 66 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 Once he found a parlor match, hunted up a 
 good opening, and put it in. Then he went on, 
 as he always did, to hammer it down so tightly 
 that it would stay. One of the blows of his 
 hard beak struck the lighting end of the match, 
 and it went off with a sharp crack. The noise 
 and the flame which burst out made the bird 
 jump three feet, and scared him nearly out of 
 his senses. 
 
 After that I took care to keep the matches 
 out of the way of a bird so fond of hiding 
 things.
 
 XIV 
 
 WHERE HE SLEEPS 
 
 MOST birds sleep on their feet. 
 
 You know how a canary goes to sleep, all 
 puffed out like a ball, with his head buried in 
 the feathers of his shoulder. He may stick his 
 bill over behind the top of the wing, but he 
 never " puts his head under his wing," as you 
 have heard. 
 
 Sometimes he stands straight up on one leg, 
 with the other drawn up out of sight in his fea- 
 thers, but more often he sits down on the perch, 
 still resting on his feet. Most wild birds of the 
 perching kind sleep in the same way. 
 
 It is only lately that we have begun to find 
 out where birds sleep, because it is dark when 
 they go to bed, and they get up before it is 
 light enough for us to see them. 
 
 The only way to catch them in bed is to go 
 out in the evening, and start them up after they 
 have gone to sleep. And this is not very kind 
 to the poor little birds. Some men who are try-
 
 68 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 ing to learn about the habits of birds have tried 
 this way, and so have found out some of their 
 sleeping-places. 
 
 One thing they have learned is that the nest 
 is not often used for a bed, except for the 
 mother, while she is sitting and keeping her 
 little ones warm. 
 
 Eobins and orioles, and others, creep into the 
 thick branches of an evergreen tree, close up to 
 the trunk. Some crawl under the edge of a 
 haystack, others into thick vines or thorny 
 bushes. All these are meant for hiding-places, 
 so that beasts which prowl about at night, and 
 like to eat birds, will not find them. 
 
 Tree sparrows like to sleep in holes in the 
 ground like little caves. The men who found 
 these cosy little bedrooms think they are places 
 dug out by field mice, and other small animals, 
 for their own use. And when they are left, the 
 birds are glad to take them. 
 
 When the weather is cold, some birds sleep 
 under the snow. You may think that would 
 not be very warm, and it is not so warm as a 
 bed in the house with plenty of blankets. But 
 it is much warmer than a perch in a tree, with 
 nothing but leaves to keep off the wind. 
 
 While the snow is falling, some birds find it 
 as good as blankets for their use. Grouse, who
 
 WHERE HE SLEEPS 69 
 
 live on the ground, dive into a snow-bank, and 
 snuggle down quietly, while the snow falls and 
 covers them all over, and keeps the cold wind off. 
 Air comes through the snow, so they do not 
 smother. 
 
 Some birds creep into a pile of brush that is 
 covered with snow, and find under the twigs 
 little places like tents, where the snow has been 
 kept out by the twigs, and they sleep there, 
 away from the wind and storm outside. 
 
 Water birds find the best sleeping-places on 
 the water, where they float all night like tiny 
 boats. Some of them leave one foot hanging 
 down and paddling a little, while they sleep, to 
 keep from being washed to the shore. 
 
 Bob-white and his family sleep in a close 
 circle on the ground, all with their heads turned 
 outward, so that they can see or hear an enemy, 
 whichever way he comes. 
 
 Hawks and eagles are said to sleep standing, 
 never sitting on the feet like a canary. Some 
 ducks and geese do even more : they sleep stand- 
 ing on one foot. Woodpeckers and chimney 
 swifts hang themselves up by their claws, using 
 their stiff tail for a brace, as if it were" a third 
 leg. 
 
 Some birds, like the crows, sleep in great 
 flocks. They agree upon a piece of woods, and
 
 60 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 all the crows for miles around come there every 
 night. Sometimes thousands sleep in this one 
 bedroom, called a crow roost. Robins do the 
 same, after the young are big enough to fly so 
 far. 
 
 Audubon, who has told us so much about 
 birds, once found a hollow tree which was the 
 sleeping - room of chimney swifts. The noise 
 they made going out in the morning was like the 
 roar of a great mill-wheel. 
 
 He wanted to see the birds asleep. So in the 
 daytime, when they were away, he had a piece 
 cut out at the foot of the tree, big enough to let 
 him in, and then put back, so the birds would 
 not notice anything unusual. 
 
 At night, after the swifts were abed, he took 
 a dark lantern and went in. He turned the 
 light upon them little by little, so as not to startle 
 them. Then he saw the whole inside of the 
 tree full of birds. They were hanging by their 
 claws, side by side, as thick as they could hang. 
 He thought there were as many as twelve thou- 
 sand in that one bedroom.
 
 XV 
 
 HIS TRAVELS 
 
 MOST of our birds take two long journeys 
 every year, one in the fall to the south, and the 
 other in the spring back to the north. These 
 journeys are called " migrations." 
 
 The birds do not go all at once, but in many 
 cases those of a kind who live near each other 
 collect in a flock and travel together. Each 
 species or kind has its own time to go. 
 
 It might be thought that it is because of the 
 cold that so many birds move to a warmer cli- 
 mate. But it is not so ; they are very well 
 dressed to endure cold. Their feather suits are 
 so warm that some of our smallest and weakest 
 birds are able to stay with us, like the chickadee 
 and the golden-crowned kinglet. It is simply 
 because they cannot get food in winter, that they 
 have to go. 
 
 The fall travel begins soon after the first of 
 July. The bobolink is one of the first to leave 
 us, though he does not start at once on his long
 
 62 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 journey. By that time his little folk are full 
 grown, and can take care of themselves, and he 
 is getting on his winter suit, or moulting. 
 
 Then some morning all the bobolinks in the 
 country are turned out of their homes in the 
 meadows, by men and horses and mowing-ma- 
 chines, for at that time the long grass is ready 
 to cut. 
 
 Then he begins to think about the wild rice 
 which is getting just right to eat. Besides, he 
 likes to take his long journey to South America 
 in an easy way, stopping here and there as he 
 goes. So some morning we miss his cheerful 
 call, and if we go to the meadow we shall not be 
 able to see a single bobolink. 
 
 There, too, are the swallows, who eat only 
 small flying insects. As the weather grows 
 cooler, these tiny flies are no longer to be found. 
 So the swallows begin to flock, as it is called. 
 For a few days they will be seen on fences and 
 telegraph wires, chattering and making a great 
 noise, and then some morning they will all be 
 gone. 
 
 They spend some time in marshes, and other 
 lonely places, before they at last set out for the 
 south. 
 
 As the days grow shorter and cooler, the war- 
 blers go. These are the bright-colored little
 
 INDIGO-BIRD
 
 HIS TRAVELS 63 
 
 fellows, who live mostly in the tops of trees. 
 Then the orioles and the thrushes and the cuckoos 
 leave us, and most birds who live on insects. 
 
 By the time that November comes in, few of 
 them will be left. Birds who can live on seeds 
 and winter berries, such as cedar -berries and 
 partridge-berries, and others, often stay with us, 
 bluebirds, finches, and sometimes robins. 
 
 Many birds take their journey by night. 
 Think of it ! Tiny creatures, that all summer 
 go to bed at dark, start off some night, when it 
 seems as if they ought to be asleep, and fly all 
 night in the dark. 
 
 When it grows light, they stop in some place 
 where they can feed and rest. And the next 
 night, or two or three nights later, they go on 
 again. So they do till they reach their winter 
 home, hundreds or thousands of miles away. 
 
 These night flyers are the timid birds, and 
 those who live in the woods, and do not like to 
 be seen, thrushes, wrens, vireos, and others. 
 Birds with strong wings, who are used to fly- 
 ing hours every day, and bolder birds, who do 
 not mind being seen, take their journey by day- 
 light. 
 
 Most of them stop now and then, a day or 
 two at a time, to feed and rest. They fly very 
 high, and faster than our railroad trains can go.
 
 64 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 In the spring the birds take their second long 
 journey, back to their last year's home. 
 
 How they know their way on these journeys, 
 men have been for many years trying to find out. 
 They have found that birds travel on regular 
 roads, or routes, that follow the rivers and the 
 shore of the ocean. They can see much better 
 than we can, and even in the night they can see 
 water. 
 
 One such road, or highway, is over the har- 
 bor of New York. When the statue of Liberty 
 was set up on an island in the harbor a few 
 years ago, it was put in the birds' path. 
 
 Usually they fly too high to mind it ; but when 
 there is a rain or fog they come much lower, 
 and, sad to say, many of them fly against it and 
 are killed. 
 
 We often see strange birds in our city streets 
 and parks, while they are passing through on 
 their migrations, for they sometimes spend sev- 
 eral days with us. 
 
 A sparrow, who was hurt and unable to fly, 
 was picked up one fall and kept in a house all 
 winter. He was not caged, and he chose for 
 his headquarters and sleeping-place a vase that 
 stood on a shelf. 
 
 He went with the family to the table, and 
 made himself very much at home there. He
 
 HIS TRAVELS 65 
 
 picked out what he wanted to eat and drink, and 
 scolded well if he did not have it. 
 
 The thing he liked best was butter, and when 
 he was ready to wipe his bill after eating, as 
 birds do, he found the coat-sleeve of the master 
 soft and nice for the purpose. This pleased the 
 bird better than it did the owner of the sleeve, 
 but he tried in vain to keep the saucy fellow 
 off. If he forgot for an instant to watch the 
 bird, he would dash up, wipe off the butter, and 
 fly away out of the reach of everybody. 
 
 In the spring the sparrow left the family, and 
 lived out of doors. But, with the first cold 
 weather of fall, he came back, went to his old 
 vase, and settled himself for the winter again. 
 This he did for several years.
 
 XVI 
 
 HIS WINTER HOME 
 
 NEARLY every bird has two homes, one f 01 
 winter and one for summer. 
 
 We can see why birds leave us and go to a 
 warmer and better place for the winter ; but why 
 they do not stay in that country where there is 
 always plenty of food, but choose to come back 
 in the spring to their old home, we do not 
 know. 
 
 It may be because they want more room to 
 build nests, and bring up their little ones. Or 
 it may be that they want to come back because 
 they love their old home. 
 
 Whatever may be the reason, it is well for us 
 that they do so, for if we had no more birds in 
 the summer than we have in the winter, we 
 should suffer very much from insects. We 
 could not raise fruit, or vegetables, or grain, for 
 insects would eat it all. That is one reason we 
 are so glad that birds come back to us in the 
 spring.
 
 HIS WINTER HOME 67 
 
 Though so many birds leave us in the fall, 
 they do not all go. A few come to us who have 
 nested farther north, and some who have been 
 with us all summer stay over winter too. These 
 last are called "permanent residents," that is, 
 they stay all the year round. 
 
 In the Middle States of the East New York, 
 Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio there are 
 twenty or twenty-five who stay all the year. 
 There are several hawks and owls and wood- 
 peckers, the crow, bob-white, the blue jay, and 
 the meadowlark, and, of the little ones, the gold- 
 finch, in his sober winter coat, his cousin the 
 purple finch, the song sparrow, the nuthatch, 
 and the chickadee. 
 
 Besides these "permanent residents," there 
 are ten or twelve who come from the north. 
 The funny little saw-whet owl is one, and the 
 snowflake, who loves to frolic in the snow, is 
 another. 
 
 Many of our summer birds stay in the South- 
 ern States all winter. Those who can eat seeds 
 and winter berries for instance, robins and 
 bluebirds, catbirds and sparrows need not go 
 very far south ; and some of them even stay 
 in the State of New York. 
 
 Most of our birds who do not eat berries, but 
 must have insects, go farther, some to Florida
 
 68 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 or the West Indies, others to Central America, 
 and a few even into South America, except 
 the woodpecker, who gets his insects under the 
 bark of trees. 
 
 The summer birds of the Western States nearly 
 all go to Mexico for the winter. 
 
 The little birds who stay with us are only 
 those who can eat seeds, as I said, or the eggs 
 and insects to be found in the crevices of the 
 bark on trees. These birds do a great deal of 
 good, for each one destroys thousands of insects 
 before they have come out of the egg. One 
 small chickadee will eat several hundred insect 
 eggs in a day. 
 
 These little fellows can almost always find 
 their food, for the snow seldom covers the trunks 
 of the trees ; but now and then in the winter 
 we have an ice storm ; then the trunks and 
 branches are buried under ice, so that the birds 
 suffer, and perhaps will starve to death. 
 
 In such a time it will be kind of you who 
 live in the country to put out food for them. 
 You can give them any table scraps of meat or 
 vegetables, or bread, chopped fine for their tiny 
 mouths, with corn or grain for bigger birds. 
 
 What they all like best to eat is suet, which 
 the butcher will give you, chopped fine, or, 
 better still, nailed or tied to a branch or a fence,
 
 HIS WINTER HOME 69 
 
 so that they can pick off morsels for them- 
 selves. This will make them all very happy ; 
 but you must see that the English sparrow does 
 not drive them away, or eat it all himself. 
 
 Some persons who live in the country or 
 small towns spread a table every day through 
 the winter for the birds. Many come for food, 
 and they have great pleasure in watching them 
 and studying their ways. 
 
 One lady I know who is an invalid, and her 
 greatest happiness in the long cold months, when 
 she cannot go out, is to set her breakfast-table, 
 and watch the guests who come to it. 
 
 She lives in the southern part of Ohio, and 
 she has all winter cardinal grosbeaks, or red- 
 birds as she calls them, blue jays, tufted titmice, 
 and others. The cardinals are fine singers, and 
 they sing to her every month in the year.
 
 xvn 
 
 HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS 
 
 MANY people think that as soon as the young 
 birds of a nest are full grown, and know how to 
 take care of themselves, the family separate, and 
 have no more to do with each other. Some have 
 even said that the old birds push the little ones 
 out of the nest to get rid of them. 
 
 All this is a great mistake, and any one who 
 has watched them carefully will say so. 
 
 In many cases, when the brood is grown and 
 all have left the nest, the whole family keep to- 
 gether. One who has eyes sharp to see will find 
 everywhere little groups of parents with their 
 young. If the old birds rear more than one 
 brood in a summer, the young ones of the first 
 nest keep together. 
 
 I have often seen little parties of young blue- 
 birds or sparrows going about after food on the 
 grass, or on the newly cut hay. Now and then 
 one of the parents would come around as if to 
 see that all was well, and then leave them alone
 
 HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS 71 
 
 again. When the second brood is ready to go 
 out, the whole family often unite in a small flock. 
 In some cases, where they could be watched, they 
 have been known to stay so all winter. All 
 through July and August, in the New England 
 and Middle States, one may see these pretty little 
 family groups. 
 
 Some birds who live and nest by themselves, 
 each pair in its own tree, or bush, or field, come 
 together in larger parties after the young are 
 grown, in a social way. A few do this only at 
 night, in what are called roosts, which I spoke 
 of in a former chapter. 
 
 Other birds, when nestlings are out, unite in 
 flocks, and stay so all the time, or through the 
 winter. Our pretty little goldfinch does this. 
 
 Most of the birds we see about our homes like 
 to have a tree or bush to themselves for their 
 nest. But there are many birds that live close 
 together all the time. Some, you may say, in 
 small villages, swallows, for instance. We 
 generally see several swallows flying about to- 
 gether. They make their nests near each other. 
 The barn swallow chooses the beams inside the 
 barn, and there are often three or four or more 
 nests in the same barn. 
 
 The eave swallows put their mud cottages in 
 a row, under the eaves outside the barn. One
 
 72 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 would think they needed to have numbers on 
 their doors, to know which was their own. 
 
 There, too, are the common crow blackbirds. 
 They come in the spring in crowds, and when it 
 is time to make nests, they find some grove or 
 clump of trees that suits them, and all of them 
 build their nests close together. Often there are 
 two or three on one tree, like a bird city. There 
 they live and rear their little ones, and it is said 
 they never quarrel. 
 
 Then there are the birds who get their food 
 from the sea, such as penguins. These birds live 
 in big cities, of many thousand nests. They go 
 to an island where no people live, and build on 
 the ground, or on rocks, or anywhere. 
 
 Sometimes they are so near together one can 
 hardly walk without stepping on them. How 
 each mother can tell her own, it is hard to see. 
 They live very happily together, and if a mother 
 is killed, so that her little ones are left orphans, 
 one of the neighbors will adopt them all, and 
 feed and bring them up with her own. 
 
 Some of these birds do not even take the 
 trouble to make a nest. They put the eggs any- 
 where on the sand or earth. 
 
 Some one, Mr. Brehm, I think, tells a pretty 
 story about a certain kind of duck who rears two 
 broods every season. After the ducklings of the
 
 HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS 73 
 
 first brood have learned to take care of them- 
 selves, they go about together, getting their food 
 and sailing on the water in a little party, while 
 their parents are hatching the second brood. 
 But when the younger ones are big enough, 
 they are led to the water, and at once their elder 
 brothers and sisters join them. They all swim 
 around together, the youngest in the middle of 
 the group, where they are protected and fed by 
 the elder brood as well as by the parents, a lovely 
 and united little family.
 
 xvm 
 
 HIS KINDNESS TO OTHERS 
 
 BIRDS are helpful to each other when in 
 trouble. If a robin is in distress, other robins 
 will come to see what is the matter, and to help 
 if they can. And not only robins, but catbirds, 
 and orioles, and chickadees, and others, will 
 come, too. 
 
 Sometimes when a person tries to rob a nest, 
 all the birds near will come in a crowd, to drive 
 away the thief. They will cry and scream at 
 him, and sometimes fly at his face, and try to 
 peck his eyes. 
 
 Birds are so little they cannot fight a man, 
 but if they can peck at his face, they can hurt 
 him, and. if they really get at his eyes, they can 
 put them out. We cannot blame the birds for 
 trying to protect themselves and their young, 
 and it is well for boys to be careful how they 
 disturb a nest. 
 
 One proof that birds really do help each 
 other is the fact that when a man wants to know
 
 SCARLET TANAGER
 
 HIS KINDNESS TO OTHERS 75 
 
 what birds live in a place, he can bring them all 
 around him by making a sound like a young 
 bird in distress. All who hear it will come to 
 see what is the matter. 
 
 Let me tell you a story of some young swal- 
 lows. They were able to fly a little, and were 
 sitting together on a roof, when a lady who 
 was watching them noticed that one of them 
 seemed to be weak, and not able to stand up. 
 
 When the parents came with food, the others 
 stood up and opened their mouths, and so were 
 fed, but this little one hardly ever got a morsel. 
 
 If birds had no love for each other, as many 
 people think, these strong little ones would not 
 have cared if their brother did starve; but what 
 did the lady see? She says that two of the 
 strong young swallows came close up to their 
 weak brother, one on each side. They put their 
 beaks under his breast and lifted him up on to 
 his legs, and then crowded so close against him 
 that their little bodies propped him up, and held 
 him there; so that he had his chance of being 
 fed as well as they. 
 
 Many times birds have been seen who were 
 blind or old, or who had a wing or a leg broken, 
 or were in some way hurt so that they could not 
 take care of themselves, and who were being 
 waited upon by other birds, fed, and led to the 
 water to drink and bathe.
 
 76 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 Birds have been found caught in the lining of 
 a nest, so that they were held there and could 
 not go for food. They had been there for 
 weeks, and would have starved to death if they 
 had not been fed. Yet they were so well taken 
 care of by other birds that they were strong and 
 able to fly. 
 
 In one case, where the nest was in a tree trunk, 
 the hole in the trunk had grown up, so that 
 when big enough to fly, they could not get out, 
 and they had been there for months. Yet when 
 a man cut open the trunk and let them out, they 
 were well and lively, proving that they had been 
 fed by friends outside all that time. 
 
 I could tell you many true stories of the kind 
 care of birds for each other, and for baby birds 
 who had lost their parents, or been stolen away 
 from them. 
 
 A gentleman in Massachusetts told me that 
 when he was a boy he saw a small flock of che- 
 winks who came about a house where food was 
 put out for birds. They came every day, and he 
 soon saw that one was bigger than the rest, and 
 that he never tried to pick up anything for him- 
 self, but all the others fed him. 
 
 One day he was cruel enough to throw a stone 
 at the bird who was so well taken care of, and 
 when he took up his victim, he found that the
 
 HIS KINDNESS TO OTHERS 77 
 
 upper and lower parts of his bill were crossed, 
 so that he could not pick up anything from the 
 ground, where chewinks find their food. He 
 had been born thus deformed, and if he had not 
 been fed every day by his friends he must have 
 starved to death. Yet so well had he been cared 
 for that he was better grown than any of the 
 others.
 
 XIX 
 
 HIS AFFECTIONS 
 
 I AM sure I need not say that father and 
 mother birds love their little ones. 
 
 So much does the mother love her nestlings 
 that she is often willing to die for them. Orioles 
 and chickadees will let themselves be caught in 
 the hand of one who has taken their young, 
 rather than desert them. 
 
 Some birds live in our chimneys, generally in 
 a flue that is not in use, and are called chimney 
 swifts. If a chimney takes fire the mother swift 
 tries hard to get her little ones out, but if they 
 cannot fly, she has been seen to fly into the fire 
 herself, and die witl^ them. 
 
 Robins have been found frozen to death on 
 their nest. They could easily have saved them- 
 selves, but they would not leave their young ones 
 to perish. A ground bird has been known to sit 
 on her nest during a freezing storm, till she died, 
 rather than go and leave her little ones to suffer. 
 
 Once when a young cedar-bird was caught
 
 HIS AFFECTIONS 79 
 
 and carried off, the father followed it for miles, 
 crying and showing so much distress that the 
 man who had stolen it was sorry for him, and 
 let the little one go. 
 
 Every one who has watched them knows that 
 birds love their mates. A man once shot a sea 
 bird, when her mate came about him, crying 
 and showing his grief as well as if he could 
 speak. 
 
 I could easily fill a book with stories to prove 
 that birds are loving to their mates and young, 
 and all of them true. 
 
 It does not seem strange that birds are fond 
 of their own, but they love others also. And 
 not only other birds, but even animals like cats, 
 dogs, and horses sometimes. 
 
 I once had an English goldfinch in the house. 
 He was a little fellow, not so big as a canary, 
 and he was very fond of another bird in the 
 room. This was a scarlet tanager, who was 
 much larger than himself. 
 
 The small bird showed^his love for his red 
 friend, just as people show love, by staying 
 close to him, singing to him, and driving away 
 any bird who came too near. 
 
 A lady once told me this story showing the 
 love of a pigeon for a cat. The cat was fond 
 of lying on the broad window sill. When the
 
 80 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 pigeon saw her there, he would fly down, and 
 alight beside her. Then he would press up 
 close to her, and rub against her fur, as if glad 
 to see her, and the cat seemed to enjoy it as 
 much as the bird. 
 
 Often a bird who is tamed loves his human 
 friends. A man had a crow who was very fond 
 of him. He had reared the bird from the nest 
 and never shut him up, but let him fly about 
 wherever he chose. 
 
 One day he was out in a sudden rain, and his 
 feathers got wet, so that he could not fly well. 
 Then a boy caught him, and carried him seven 
 miles away. He clipped one wing, so that the 
 crow could not fly, and kept .him shut in the 
 house all winter. In the spring, the first time he 
 could get out, the bird started for his old home. 
 
 He could not fly, but he walked the seven 
 miles, through mud and wet, and came home so 
 tired that he was almost dead. When his mas- 
 ter saw him coming he went to meet him, took 
 him up and petted him, and talked to him. 
 
 The poor fellow was so happy it seemed as if 
 he could not live. But he was taken care of, 
 and got well, and lived many years. But never 
 after that would he leave the place, though 
 when his new feathers came in he could fly as 
 well as ever.
 
 HOUSE WREN
 
 HIS AFFECTIONS 81 
 
 Canary birds often love their mistresses. I 
 have heard of one who was so grieved by a harsh 
 word, that in a few minutes he fell off his perch 
 dead. 
 
 These true stories show us how tender and 
 loving these little creatures are, and how careful 
 we should be to treat them gently and kindly. 
 
 An interesting and true story is told by a 
 clergyman in Ohio. It is a habit of wrens to 
 find a good nesting-place, and then look for a 
 mate to occupy it. One spring a wren chose a 
 nice bird-box on his place, and held it ready for 
 the expected bride. But she did not come, and 
 a pair of English sparrows took a fancy to the 
 same house. 
 
 Sparrows expect to get what they want, and 
 are always ready to fight for it, so they gave 
 battle to the wren. But wrens also will fight 
 for their own, and this wren held his house 
 against the enemy for two weeks. Still the 
 mate did not appear, and finally the lonely bird 
 lost heart, and let the sparrows set up house- 
 keeping in his box, though he did not go away. 
 
 When the young sparrows were hatched, and 
 feeding began, the wren suddenly became 
 friendly. He hunted up small green worms, 
 probably such as are good for wrenlings, and 
 offered them to the young sparrows.
 
 82 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 Nestlings are never known to refuse anything 
 to eat, and wren food seemed to suit the sparrows, 
 for they soon outgrew the nursery. 
 
 All summer this queer thing went on. The 
 sparrows reared three or four broods, and the 
 wren did his full share of the work, and not 
 only of feeding the young, but of repairing and 
 rebuilding the nest for each fresh brood.
 
 XX 
 
 HIS INTELLIGENCE 
 
 BEFORE people knew very much about the 
 ways of birds, it was thought that they did not 
 have to be taught anything, but that they knew 
 everything they needed to know, as soon as they 
 were born. That is, they were said to act from 
 instinct alone, and not at all from reason, as we 
 do. 
 
 Another notion that people had was that birds 
 of a kind were just alike ; that they looked ex- 
 actly like each other, all acted in the same way, 
 and all sang the same song. 
 
 But since we have begun to study birds more 
 closely, we find these things are not true. We 
 find that birds learn things by being taught, as 
 we do. Also, they find out how to do things 
 themselves, and they are not all alike, as so many 
 machines. 
 
 More than this, we see that they do not look 
 nor act exactly like each other. For when we 
 know one robin or one oriole well, we can tell
 
 84 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 him from any other robin or oriole. And, as I 
 said before, no two of a kind sing precisely the 
 same song. 
 
 A bird shows his intelligence in many ways. 
 One is by the way he acts when he cannot do as 
 he is used to doing. A robin I know of wished 
 to build a nest, but could not find mud to put 
 into it, for it was a very dry time, and there 
 were no streams near. Now a robin's nest must 
 have mud, and the bird seemed puzzled for 
 a while. But at last she thought of a way to 
 get it. 
 
 She went to a bathing-dish that the people of 
 the house kept filled with water for the birds, 
 jumped into it, and got her legs very wet. 
 Then she flew to the road, and tramped around 
 in the dust and dirt. 
 
 In a short time her legs had a good coating 
 of mud, which she carefully picked off with her 
 bill, and took to the nest she was building. 
 
 This she did a great many times, and the 
 lady who told me of it watched her till she had 
 as much mud as she needed. 
 
 A bird often shows sense by the way she 
 repairs a nest that has been thrown out of place. 
 Sometimes she will add a new stay, tying the 
 nest to a stronger limb. One sparrow, whose 
 nest broke loose, put so many stays to the
 
 HIS INTELLIGENCE 85 
 
 branch above that they made a little roof like a 
 tent over it. 
 
 Another way a bird shows reason is in seeing 
 the advantage of a new place. A pair of swal- 
 lows lived far out in the West, hundreds of 
 miles from any house. They had no doubt 
 always nested in a cave, or a hole in a tree. But 
 one day they found a house put up. It was a 
 mere shed, to be used as a blacksmith shop, by a 
 party of men who were looking over the country. 
 
 At once the birds saw how nice it would be 
 to have a roof over their heads. And although 
 there was a big fire, and the noise of men at 
 work, they * built the nest over the anvil, and 
 reared the family in safety. 
 
 Woodpeckers have shown that they can learn. 
 Some of them have found an easier way to get 
 food than to dig through the bark of trees 
 for it. 
 
 The flicker, or golden-winged woodpecker, 
 has learned that ants and* other insects are good 
 to eat, and now he does not think of digging 
 into bark any more. 
 
 The red-headed woodpecker has learned to 
 catch flies like a common flycatcher. The yellow*- 
 bellied, or sapsucker, cuts holes in the trees, and 
 eats the insects that come to feed on the sweet 
 sap that drips from them.
 
 86 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
 
 Woodpeckers have also learned to cut a hole 
 through a board and nest inside a building, in- 
 stead of drilling a deep hole in the trunk of a 
 tree for a nest. 
 
 Birds show intelligence when they draw us 
 away from their young ones, by acting as if 
 they were hurt and not able to fly. I have al- 
 ready spoken about that. 
 
 Sometimes when a bird is caught he will lie 
 quiet send pretend to be dead. But all the time 
 he is looking out for a chance to fly away. 
 
 A man who watched birds very closely once 
 saw an interesting instance of their intelligence. 
 They were two of the birds who get their food 
 on the seashore by turning over stones and eat- 
 ing the creatures hidden under them. They 
 had found a big dead fish thrown up on the 
 beach and half buried in sand. Under such a 
 fish they were sure they should find food, so 
 they went to work to turn it over. The fish 
 was three and a half feet long, and the birds 
 were about as big as our sandpipers. So it was 
 a hard thing to do. 
 
 First they pushed against it with their beaks 
 and breast, but it did not move. Then they 
 went around the other side and scratched away 
 a good deal of sand from under the fish, and 
 went back and tried again to turn it over. Still 
 it was too heavy to stir.
 
 HIS INTELLIGENCE 87 
 
 Again they ran around the other side, scraped 
 away more sand, and tried it once more. They 
 kept up this work for half an' hour, but did not 
 succeed in stirring the great fish. 
 
 At this time the man, who had hidden himself 
 to watch them, saw another bird coming. The 
 two little workers greeted him with joyful cries, 
 to which he replied in the same tones. Then 
 all three set to work on the heavy fish. They 
 dug more sand out from the lower side, and 
 then pushed against the upper side with all their 
 strength. They lifted it a few inches, but it 
 fell back. 
 
 At last, after resting a few minutes, without 
 moving from their places, they worked it in this 
 way. They rested their breasts on the sand, 
 put their beaks under, and lifted. When the 
 fish was raised several inches, they held it with 
 their beaks and pushed their breasts against it, 
 when over it went, down the little pitch they 
 had made. 
 
 They could not stop, and they went with it, 
 but at once came back and found enough to pay 
 them for their hard work. 
 
 One who really watches birds to see what 
 they are doing will see many actions that show 
 intelligence and reason.
 
 HOW HE IS MADE
 
 92 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 He can sing while he is working very hard to 
 fly upward. If you will try to sing while run- 
 ning up a hill, you will see how hard it is to do 
 that. 
 
 A bird's head is joined to his neck at one place, 
 something like a hinge. Other animals, like dogs 
 and cats, have two hinges, or places of joining. 
 That is why a bird is able to turn his head 
 around so far that he can look down his own 
 back. No other creature can do so. 
 
 Because of this, he is able to dress every 
 feather on his body, and to sleep with his head 
 laid back on his shoulder. 
 
 Nearly all birds have some of their bones hol- 
 low, and air -sacs, or pockets, under the skin. 
 These sacs they can fill with air and make them- 
 selves light, so that those who live in the water 
 cannot sink, but float like a cork. 
 
 Men who study the way birds are made do 
 not yet know all the uses of the hollow bones 
 and air-sacs. That is one of the things left for 
 you young folk to find out. 
 
 Birds who get their food in marshes, or the 
 edge of the water, have long legs for wading. 
 They have also long necks, so they can pick up 
 food from the ground. 
 
 Birds who swim have webs between the toes, 
 that turn their feet into paddles.
 
 CHEWINK, OR TOWHEE
 
 HIS BODY 93 
 
 Birds have very large gullets. In many cases 
 the gullet leads into a place called the crop, where 
 food is kept before it goes into the stomach. 
 Sometimes the food is made soft in the crop, and 
 then fed to the young ones, as I told you. 
 
 Birds have no teeth, yet they eat hard seeds, 
 like acorns and grains of corn. To break these 
 up, and get them ready for the stomach, they 
 have a gizzard, which is a sort of grinding-mill. 
 And to help in the work of grinding they swal- 
 low small stones. 
 
 One of the wonderful things about birds is the 
 height at which they can live, and not only live, 
 but fly. A man cannot go higher than twenty- 
 two or twenty-three thousand feet, while moving 
 about or exercising, because the air is so rare he 
 cannot breathe. The highest a man was ever 
 known to go and live, it is said, was less than 
 thirty thousand feet, -and that was in a balloon, 
 where he did not move. 
 
 But birds go a good deal higher than this, 
 and can fly which is violent exercise at 
 that height. It is thought by some that the 
 thinness of the air may be the cause of the great 
 speed with which birds fly in that region. But 
 there is still much to be found out about this. 
 
 Besides the marvels of flight, birds have other 
 powers almost as strange. Many of them can fly
 
 94: HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 under water with perfect ease, and, more than 
 that, they can, when they wish, sink slowly till 
 nothing is left above water but their beaks, to 
 breathe. And they can stay so as long as they 
 choose, keeping still in one spot, without moving. 
 
 A cormorant in a zoological garden, who 
 wanted to catch some of the swallows skim- 
 ming over the pond, sank his body till only his 
 head was out, and held himself there perfectly 
 still. 
 
 Birds who are hunted, as geese, have been 
 known to save their lives in that way, by sink- 
 ing their body under water, leaving in sight only 
 the tip of the bill, which is so small it is not 
 readily seen. 
 
 To do such things, birds must be able to make 
 their bodies heavy when they choose, as well as 
 light, which we know they are able to do by fill- 
 ing their air-sacs with air. 
 
 There are many things still to be found out 
 about the powers of birds.
 
 XXII 
 
 HIS BEAK AND TONGUE 
 
 How does a bird get along without a hand ? 
 He has to prepare food ; to keep his feathers in 
 order ; to build the nest ; to 
 feed and take care of the young; 
 and sometimes to fight other 
 birds. How can all this be 
 done without a hand ? 
 
 The beak is the only thing 
 most birds have in place of a hand, and it is 
 wonderful to see how many things they can do 
 with it. 
 
 Orioles use it as a needle, in making the nest. 
 With it they weave strips of soft bark or strings, 
 back and forth, in and out, to make the firm 
 pocket they hang on the 
 elm-tree (see Fig. 1). 
 
 A woodpecker's beak is 
 a chisel or pick, to cut a 
 J. 2 . deep hole in a tree trunk 
 
 Bill of Woodpecker. f or a nest (Fig. 2). With
 
 96 
 
 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 FIG. 3. 
 Bill of Swal- 
 low. 
 
 a nuthatch it is a hammer, to crack the nut he 
 
 has wedged into a crevice in the bark so tightly 
 
 it cannot slip. 
 
 Some birds use the beak to dig in the ground, 
 as the bank swallows, while the barn 
 swallows make it a trowel, to carry 
 and plaster mud (Fig. 3). All of 
 them use it as a hand to feed them- 
 selves, and a brush and comb to dress 
 their feathers. 
 
 Birds need to use the beak a good 
 
 deal, because in most cases it grows like our 
 
 finger-nails. If they did not keep it worn off, 
 
 it would grow so long as to trouble them. 
 
 Sometimes when a bird lives in a cage and does 
 
 not use his bill, it grows so long that he can 
 
 hardly pick up his 
 
 food. 
 
 " The woodcock's 
 
 long beak is sensitive, 
 
 so that he can feel the 
 
 worms, deep in the 
 
 mud where they live. 
 
 Many waders and 
 
 swimmers have beaks 
 
 soft like leather. 
 
 ^ You can tell by the shape of the beak how a 
 
 bird lives, and what he eats. The strong, hooked 
 
 FIG. 4. 
 Bill of Hawk.
 
 HIS BEAK AND TONGUE 97 
 
 beak of a hawk shows that he catches live ani- 
 mals to eat (Fig. 4). The long, narrow, sharp 
 bill of a heron shows that he spears his prey, 
 often under water. 
 
 The sharp-pointed bill of a warbler is to pick 
 tiny insects and eggs out of blos- 
 soms, and from under leaves. The 
 sharp-edged bill of a sparrow (Fig. 
 5) is to break open the hard shells 
 of seeds. g m of Sparrow> 
 
 The curious beak of a crossbill 
 (Fig. 6) is to pick seeds out of pine 
 cones. 
 
 A duck's wide beak, with a 
 strainer at the edge, is to let water . 
 
 . . Bill of Crossbill. 
 
 out while keeping tood in. A 
 spoon-shaped bill is to scoop up food, and a thin, 
 flat one is to poke into narrow cracks. 
 
 Both parts of the beak, which take the place 
 of our jaws, are called mandibles, upper and 
 lower. Both of them can be moved, while we 
 can move only our lower jaw. 
 
 Birds' tongues are as curious as their beaks. 
 To all birds they take the place of a finger, as 
 the beak takes the place of a hand, and they 
 differ as much as the beaks from each other. 
 
 Insect eggs are very small, and often packed 
 snugly into cracks and corners, and the birds
 
 98 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 who eat them have a brush on the tip of the 
 tongue, which brushes an egg out of its hiding- 
 place very easily. 
 
 The nuthatch picks his small grubs out of 
 crevices in bark with the four-tined fork at the 
 end of his tongue. 
 
 A hummingbird's tongue can be used as a 
 tube, to draw up the honey of flowers, 
 or perhaps as a pair of tweezers, to pick 
 out the tiny spiders that live there. 
 
 A woodpecker has barbs on his 
 tongue, to spear insects hidden under 
 the bark, as shown by Mr. Lucas (Fig. 
 7). It is said to be sticky also, to hold 
 small ones, like ants. 
 
 The tongues of birds are of many 
 shapes, but each one is fitted to its 
 owner's way of getting a living. 
 FIG. 7. Because the tongue is often horny, 
 rjF'P f e and they eat strange things, it is some- 
 of Downy times thought that birds have little sense 
 ^ taste - But we cannot be sure of this, 
 and we know they all have notions 
 about their food. 
 
 Dr. Ward tells a story of some geese, which 
 shows that they do not lack that sense. While 
 sailing upon a river he noticed on the bank 
 some geese, feeding on the rinds of watermelon,
 
 HIS BEAK AND TONGUE 99 
 
 which they picked out of the garbage dumped 
 there. 
 
 The rind, when taken out of the mass, was 
 none too clean, being covered with mud and 
 other dirt. When a goose found a piece to suit 
 him, he took it up, carried it to the edge, and 
 dropped it into the shallow water. Then he 
 stood and watched it till the running stream 
 washed it clean, when he stepped into the water 
 and quickly ate off the part he wanted.
 
 xxm 
 
 HIS EYES AND EARS 
 
 BIRDS' eyes are very different from ours. To 
 begin with, they are round. Then they are 
 placed one on each side of the head, so that 
 they can look two ways at once. Owls are the 
 only birds who have eyes turned forward like 
 ours. 
 
 Birds' eyes also are of many colors. Besides 
 our common black, brown, blue, and gray, birds 
 have light and dark green, bright red, pale and 
 deep yellow and orange, even white. 
 
 They have, like us, two eyelids. But while 
 we use the upper one to close our eyes, most 
 birds use the lower one. They have also a third 
 eyelid, inside the others, a thin, white sort of 
 skin, that moves across the eye from side to side, 
 and is called the " nictitating membrane." 
 
 There are other ways in which birds' eyes 
 differ from ours. The men who try to know 
 exactly how birds are made have found out that 
 birds' eyes make everything look much larger
 
 REDSTARTS (FEMALE ON NEST;
 
 HIS EYES AND EARS 101 
 
 than it is, in other words, they are like magni- 
 fying glasses, or microscopes, so that a tiny in- 
 sect egg, that we can hardly see, looks very big 
 to a warbler. 
 
 Stranger still, when a bird is far off, his eyes 
 are like telescopes. That is, when a hawk is 
 soaring about far above the earth, he can see a 
 mouse on the ground as well as if he had a tele- 
 scope to look through. And the gulls who sail 
 about over the shore, and follow steamers on sea 
 voyages, can see small fish and tiny bits of 
 bread thrown out by the passengers, even when 
 they are lost to us in the foam made by the 
 vessel. 
 
 Mr. Frank Bolles had a pet barred owl, and 
 used to take him out with him. He says that 
 the bird's sight was wonderful, better than his 
 own aided by a strong glass. Many times the 
 bird would see and watch a hawk so far off that 
 Mr. Bolles with his glass could not see him until 
 he came ne*arer, and then he looked no bigger 
 than a dot against the sky. 
 
 There is a story told of some small birds mi- 
 grating over the island of Heligoland, suddenly 
 coming down in a flock on to a man's garden, 
 and beginning at once to work among the 
 leaves as if they were feeding. 
 
 The owner of the garden knew they did not
 
 102 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 eat leaves, so he shot a few and found them 
 stuffed with small caterpillars. Then he looked 
 at the plants and found many more caterpillars, 
 each in the curled-up end of a leaf. The in- 
 sects could not be seen, yet the birds, while fly- 
 ino- over, no doubt saw the curled leaves and 
 
 e ' 
 
 knew they were there. 
 
 Such eyes must be of great use in helping 
 birds to find their food, and to avoid their ene- 
 mies. But think what giants we must look to 
 them ! It is no wonder they are afraid of us. 
 
 Perhaps even more useful to a bird than his 
 eyes are his ears, though they are so nicely cov- 
 ered up by the feathers that we cannot see 
 them. The tufts of feathers that stand up on 
 some owls' heads, and are called ears, are not 
 ears at all, but merely decorations, like the 
 crests of some birds and the long tail feathers of 
 others. 
 
 But because they cannot be seen, we must not 
 think birds have no ears ; they have very good 
 ones indeed. They can hear much better than 
 we can. 
 
 Every one has seen a robin run over the grass 
 and turn his head one side to listen. It is sup- 
 posed that he hears the earthworm move under 
 the sod, and if he is watched, he will often be 
 seen to pull the worm from that very spot.
 
 HIS EYES AND EARS 103 
 
 When a woodpecker taps on a tree trunk and 
 turns his head to listen, it is thought that he 
 hears the grub stir under the bark, for when he 
 begins to cut the bark away, he is pretty sure to 
 find and draw it out. 
 
 Birds that are much hunted by men, like 
 ducks and geese, get to be very knowing, and 
 show how wonderful is their hearing. They 
 can tell the difference between a noise made by 
 an animal and that made by a man. A deer or 
 any animal may crash through the bushes, and 
 they pay no attention to it, but if a man makes 
 the least sound they are off in an instant. 
 
 A bird's ears are behind the eyes, and a little 
 below them. They are covered by delicate fea- 
 thers that hide them from sight. When the 
 bird raises these feathers perhaps to hear bet- 
 ter they look like tiny ear muffs. 
 
 Owls have little flaps of skin with which they 
 can shut up their ears when they wish to be 
 quiet. This must be very useful to birds who 
 prefer to sleep during the day, when nearly 
 everybody else is awake and making a noise. 
 Many of us who live in cities would like to be 
 able to close our ears sometimes. 
 
 Mr. Bolles tells a story about the sharp hear- 
 ing of a heron. The bird was on a tree dress- 
 ing his plumage, and he was hidden in some 
 bushes and could not be seen.
 
 104 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 Mr. Bolles made all sorts of noises to start up 
 the heron and make him fly. First he imitated 
 animal sounds. He quacked, and barked, and 
 mewed, and brayed, and the bird looked inter- 
 ested, but not at all alarmed. Then he whistled 
 and sang, and at last talked plainly, but the 
 bird only looked over his way, as if to see what 
 new sort of beast was hidden there. 
 
 No noise that he could make startled the 
 heron in the least, until a twig snapped under 
 his foot, when the bird was off like a shot. 
 That sound he well knew was made by his most 
 feared enemy, man.
 
 XXIV 
 
 HIS FEET AND LEGS 
 
 A BIRD always stands on his toes, not on his 
 whole foot, as we do. The long slim part that 
 we call the leg is really the foot, and the joint 
 we see nearly up to the bird's body is the bird's 
 heel. But in this book we will 
 speak of it in the common way, 
 calling the toes the foot, and the 
 part up to the joint the leg. 
 
 People all over the world have 
 the same kind of feet 
 and the same number 
 of toes ; but with birds 
 it is not so. Most of 
 them have four toes 
 (Fig. 8), but some 
 have only three, and a few have no more than 
 two. 
 
 In the use of the feet there is still more 
 variety. There are, as Dr. Coues divides them, 
 three kinds of feet among birds : 
 
 FIG. 8. 
 Foot of Blackbird.
 
 106 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 First, a foot that can be used like a hand to 
 clasp a perch, a " perching foot." 
 
 Second, one that is good to use as a foot, but 
 not at all like a hand, called a "scratching 
 foot." 
 
 Third, one that is like neither hand nor foot, 
 but a paddle, called a " swimming foot." 
 
 The birds who have the first kind, the "perch- 
 ing foot," have usually three toes 
 turned forward and one turned 
 back. They can grasp a branch 
 or a twig as tightly as if with a 
 hand, as all our common little 
 birds do. And the large birds 
 of prey, such as hawks and owls 
 (Fig. 9), hold in them live mice 
 and squirrels and the other little 
 animals they eat. 
 
 Some birds with perching feet have the toes 
 placed another way. Woodpeckers 
 have two turned forward and two 
 turned back, so that they can hold bet- 
 ter to a tree trunk (Fig. 10). 
 
 A strange thing about the perching 
 toes is the way they are made to hold 
 on, so that the birds can sleep on a 
 perch, and not fall. Inside the toes are tendons, 
 something like cords, which act like elastic rub*
 
 LESSER YELLOWLEGS
 
 HIS FEET AND LEGS 107 
 
 ber. When a bird bends his leg, the toes are 
 drawn up and held so. When he is sitting on a 
 perch, he could not fall off if he wanted to. 
 
 Birds who have the (t scratching foot," the 
 second kind, mostly go about on the ground, or 
 wade in the water. They do not usually sleep 
 on perches, but sleep standing, or crouch on the 
 ground. In the arctic regions, where there is a 
 great deal of snow, some birds with scratching 
 feet, who have to go about in it, have in winter 
 what has been called " snowshoes," because il 
 enables them to walk on the snow with ease. 
 It is a web-like growth on the side of each toe, 
 which serves the same purpose with birds that 
 snowshoes do with men, keeps them from sink- 
 ing into the snow. 
 
 Birds who have the " swimming foot," the 
 third kind, have the toes made into a paddle 
 by webs stretched between them. They are the 
 water birds, ducks, geese, gulls, and others. 
 
 The toes of all birds have long, sharp claws, 
 not at all like our toe-nails. In the whip-poor- 
 will and the nighthawk, one edge of the middle 
 claw has teeth like a comb. 
 
 The long slim part above the toes, what we 
 call the leg, is named in the books the " tarsus." 
 The tarsus is generally bare, with a leathery 
 skin ; but in some hawks and owls it is covered
 
 108 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 with feathers. Birds who live away up in the 
 cold have feathers down on to the toes. 
 
 On looking carefully at one of these bare 
 legs, it will be seen that it is not smooth like a 
 lead pencil. It is marked in a sort of pattern. 
 Different species of birds show different patterns. 
 Some look like the shingles on a roof ; others 
 like little squares or plates ; and some are finer, 
 like scales on a tiny fish. 
 
 These marks help in arranging birds in the 
 books. That is, all who have the same pattern 
 are said to be related. 
 
 The legs of birds are not all of the same 
 length for their size. Some who never go about 
 on the ground, like hummingbirds, swallows, 
 and swifts, have very short legs. Birds who 
 walk and hop on the ground have them longer, 
 and birds who wade in the water have the long- 
 est of all.
 
 XXV 
 
 HIS WINGS AND TAIL 
 
 A BIRD'S wing does not look much like our 
 arm and hand, yet the bones show that they are 
 the same. The bird has a shoulder, elbow, and 
 wrist, as we have. He even has fingers, though 
 they are so covered up by feathers that one would 
 never know it. He has not so many fingers as 
 we have, and they are not movable like ours. 
 
 A bird's wing is a wonderful flying-machine, 
 which men have been trying to imitate these 
 many years. It is made of long stiff feathers, 
 which fold down smoothly over one another at 
 his side when he is resting, but can spread in an 
 instant into a broad fan, to beat the air and 
 carry him away. 
 
 One would not think that feathers could have 
 so much power ; but when the wing is spread, the 
 barbs of the feathers hook together with tiny 
 hooks, so small a microscope is needed to see 
 them ; and that, together with the edges lapping 
 over each other, makes them almost like one 
 solid surface.
 
 110 
 
 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 Wings are not alike in shape. The wing of 
 a swallow is long and narrow, while that of a 
 hen or grouse is short and round. We can tell 
 by the shape of a wing how a bird flies. 
 
 A long, narrow, pointed wing shows that the 
 
 FIG. 11. 
 
 Wing of Swift. 
 
 bird has an easy, skimming flight, either he 
 
 flies great distances, or spends hours at a time 
 
 on wing (Fig. 11). 
 
 The short round wing (Fig. 12) shows that 
 
 a bird has a strong flight for short distances. 
 These wings are 
 found mostly on 
 rather heavy birds, 
 like grouse. 
 
 The longest wings 
 are seen on water 
 birds, such as thr 
 
 petrel and the frigate-bird. The shortest, also. 
 
 are found among water birds, those who swim 
 
 more than they fly, as the auks. 
 
 All the feathers of the wing are named, and 
 
 FIG. 12. 
 Wing of Sparrow.
 
 HIS WINGS AND TAIL 
 
 111 
 
 it will be well to remember that the long stiff 
 quills are called remiges or "rowers." These are 
 firmly rooted in the flesh, and are the hardest 
 to pull out. They are the most important to 
 the safety of the bird. 
 
 Birds have also another use for their wings. 
 They are a strong weapon to defend themselves, 
 or to fight others. A 
 
 large 
 
 severe 
 
 wing, 
 
 bird can give a 
 blow with his 
 
 and when 
 
 pi- 
 
 geons fight, it is said 
 they hold up one wing 
 to protect themselves 
 while they strike at the 
 enemy with the other. 
 
 Sometimes wings 
 serve as musical instru- 
 ments. Woodcocks 
 make whistling sounds 
 with their wings as they 
 fly, and mourning doves 
 softly murmuring ones. Ruffed grouse produce 
 with theirs a rolling drum-like effect, and other? 
 rattle theirs like castanets. 
 
 If wings are not used, they slowly get to be 
 smaller and weaker, each generation having them 
 more and more useless, till after a while they are 
 
 FIG. 13.' 
 TaU of Ruffed Grouse.
 
 112 
 
 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 of no use whatever, and the birds cannot fly 
 at all. This has happened, it is supposed, to 
 the ostrich family and to some 
 birds living in the sea. 
 
 The tail of a bird is formed of 
 an equal number of feathers in 
 pairs, most often twelve. When 
 spread they are the shape of a 
 fan (Fig. 13), and when closed they lie over 
 each other with the middle pair on top. 
 
 The tail feathers are not always of the same 
 length, and that makes a difference in the shape 
 of the end. Sometimes they are even (like Fig. 
 
 FIG. 15. 
 TaU of Swallow-tailed Kite. 
 
 14), when the tail is said to be "square." 
 Sometimes the middle feathers are a little longer 
 than the outside ones, and then it is " rounded "
 
 HIS WINGS AND TAIL 113 
 
 or " pointed." If the outside feathers are long- 
 est, the tail is " forked " (Fig. 15). 
 
 The feathers of the tail are called rectrices, 
 or " rudders," because they are supposed to be 
 used to steer, or direct the bird's course in fly- 
 ing. But the tail is used also as a brake to 
 check the speed in alighting. 
 
 The tail is used more than any other organ 
 to express the emotions. 
 Some birds, like the cat- 
 bird and thrasher, keep it 
 moving nearly all the time, 
 jerking it this way and that, 
 and tossing it upward. 
 
 In woodpeckers and swifts the tail feathers 
 are not soft at the end like others, but the stems 
 or shafts project beyond the feathery part, and 
 are stiff like the tail of a sapsucker (Fig. 16) 
 or sharp like this of the chimney swift (Fig. 
 17). These birds use the tail as 
 a prop to hold them against the 
 tree trunk or chimney wall, and 
 to help them in climbing. 
 
 Tail feathers are not so 
 strongly rooted as wing feathers, 
 and are easily pulled out. Sometimes, when a 
 man or boy tries to catch a bird by the tail, the 
 bird will escape, leaving the tail in his hand.
 
 XXVI 
 
 HIS DRESS 
 
 A BIRD'S whole dress is made of feathers, but 
 the feathers are not all alike. There are, indeed, 
 several kinds of feathers, and four of them are 
 found on every bird. There are flight feathers, 
 clothing feathers, downy feathers, thread feathers, 
 and powder-down feathers. 
 
 Feathers of all kinds are made in the same 
 way. All have, first, a quill, the horny part next 
 to the body ; second, a shaft, the white part on 
 which the barbs grow ; third, the barbs, which 
 grow out on each side of the shaft, and together 
 are called the vane ; fourth, the barbules, or little 
 barbs, growing out of the barbs ; and last, the 
 barbicels, which grow on the barbules, and on 
 the wings have the tiny hooks which hold them 
 together. 
 
 But though feathers are made on the same 
 pattern, they look very different. The wing and 
 tail feathers are stiff and strong, and are called 
 flight feathers, but those on the breast and body
 
 CATBIRD
 
 HIS DRESS 115 
 
 are called soft, and cling closely to keep the bird 
 warm and dry. These are called the clothing 
 feathers, because they clothe the bird. 
 
 Down feathers, which are almost always hid- 
 den under the clothing feathers, are, like their 
 name, downy, and answer to our under-clothes. 
 
 Thread feathers grow among the clothing 
 feathers, and are almost like hairs. It is these 
 that the cook singes off the fowls. 
 
 Kingfishers who dive, and ducks who spend 
 much time on the water, have very thick down 
 under the feathers like suits of very warm 
 under-clothes which keeps the water away 
 from their bodies. Thus they can dive, or sit on 
 the water hours at a time, and not feel wet at all. 
 
 Powder-down feathers grow on some herons 
 and cockatoos. They are called by that name 
 because the tip ends are continually breaking off 
 like white dust. Nobody knows their use. 
 
 Different from all these are the feathers called 
 plumes, like the long, soft ostrich plumes we all 
 know ; the dainty little ones that stand straight 
 up, and look as if the wind would blow them 
 away ; the long, showy feathers that the peacock 
 spreads with so much pride, or even the pretty, 
 drooping ones in the cock's tail. 
 
 These feathers are of no use for flight or for 
 warmth, they rather hinder than help. They are
 
 116 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 for ornament, and there are many kinds among 
 birds, all exquisitely beautiful. Nature has given 
 to birds a more wonderful dress than to any 
 other living creature. 
 
 It is with his feathers that a bird expresses his 
 :2eelings. In anger he fluffs them out till he 
 looks twice as big as usual ; we have all seen a 
 hen bristle up when a dog comes near her brood. 
 
 Nervousness or excitement is shown by jerk- 
 ing the wings and tail, and if a bird wishes to 
 escape notice, he can make his plumage a perfect 
 disguise. Mr. Bolles's pet owl would stretch 
 himself up long and slim, with feathers hugging 
 his body, when he looked so much like a broken 
 branch of a tree that Mr. Bolles could hardly 
 see him. And another owl that I heard of, when 
 he was on the ground, would flatten himself and 
 spread his plumage around, so that the eye could 
 scarcely separate him from the dead leaves about 
 him. 
 
 No one takes better care of his dress than a 
 bird, and that is why it looks well for a year. 
 Every day, with most birds, it is washed and care- 
 fully dried, each feather being passed through 
 the bill, and the whole thoroughly shaken out. 
 At night one may often see robins and catbirds 
 before going to bed, dressing their plumage 
 and shaking off the day's dust.
 
 HIS DRESS 117 
 
 Besides washing and drying the feathers, birds 
 need oil to keep them in best condition. For 
 this purpose they have a little " oil jug," a small 
 gland over the tail, out of which, with the bill, 
 they can squeeze a drop of oil. We often see 
 ducks and geese oiling their feathers before a 
 rain. 
 
 Water birds, who need a great deal of oil to 
 keep out the wet, have the oil jug very large. 
 
 Birds seem to know perfectly well the beauty 
 of their plumage. Not only do they try to show 
 it off, as the peacock when he spreads his tail, 
 but they seem to fe'el shame when their feathers 
 are injured or soiled. One white feather coming 
 in where it does not belong will make a bird 
 very unhappy. He will work and tug at it to 
 pull it out, and often make himself actually ill 
 over the trouble. I had a captive bird who 
 died, I think, from worry and work over a wing 
 feather which persisted in coming in white, and 
 which he insisted on pulling out every time.
 
 xxvn 
 
 DIFFERENT COLORED SUITS 
 
 A BIRD does not always wear the same colored 
 dress, as I said in the chapter on moulting. A 
 goldfinch, who through the summer wears a gay 
 yellow coat, comes out in the fall in plain olive 
 and black; and the scarlet tanager, who flour- 
 ishes in the most brilliant red, changes to a quiet 
 green in winter. Besides these, some birds wear 
 at one season a spotted coat, and come out after- 
 wards in one of plain colors. 
 
 Most of them change by moulting, as I ex- 
 plained, the old feathers dropping out and new 
 ones of another color coming in ; or, to speak 
 exactly, the new ones growing out and pushing 
 the old ones off on their tips. But some change 
 color without moulting. All birds moult com- 
 pletely in the autumn, many moult partially in 
 the spring, and some, as I said, change without 
 moulting. 
 
 This last change of color is made partly by 
 fading, and partly by breaking off the tips of the
 
 DIFFERENT COLORED SUITS 119 
 
 feathers, or what is called " abrasion." This is a 
 curious process. I told you something about it 
 in chapter vii. Certain feathers have edges dif- 
 ferent in color from the rest ; as, for example, 
 a black feather with tips of yellow. While the 
 feathers are new and perfect, as they He over 
 each other like shingles on a roof, only the edges 
 show, and these being yellow, the bird appears 
 to be dressed in yellow. But the yellow tips are 
 not so strong as the rest, and they break or wear 
 off, or are pulled off in the spring. What is 
 strange, they break exactly where the black 
 begins. So as soon as the yellow is off, the black 
 shows, and behold, the yellow bird suddenly 
 becomes a black bird. 
 
 That is the way some birds manage to put on 
 their spring dress in the fall. The solid color is 
 the color of the spring, but it is hidden or veiled 
 by tips of another color for winter. 
 
 The meadowlark changes in this way. In the 
 winter his coat is brownish, or buff. In the 
 spring these tips are worn or broken off, and he 
 comes out in yellow and black. 
 
 Another change, even more curious, is made 
 by some birds, who all winter wear white spots, 
 or light scolloped edges to their feathers, and 
 in spring the spots are gone. 
 
 In these, the white or light parts only break
 
 120 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 off, as sharply as if cut with scissors. They leave 
 the edges of the feathers notched in queer ways, 
 but as they lie over each other that does not 
 show. 
 
 Birds in this way can change color without 
 changing their feathers. While moulting but 
 once a year, they can show two suits, and by 
 partially moulting twice, can show three suits. 
 
 Another thing about the color of feathers is 
 interesting. Some colors, such as black, and red, 
 and brown, are caused by coloring matter in the 
 feather. But other colors are only an effect of 
 the way the feather is made, whether it has 
 ridges on it, or certain minute specks under the 
 surface, which seem to act as prisms (says Dr. 
 Newton), and reflect the light in different colors. 
 
 For instance, green is always due to some 
 shade of yellow coloring matter under a surface 
 full of lengthwise ridges, and other colors are 
 made in similar ways. 
 
 These curious facts have been found out by 
 that tell-tale little instrument the microscope, and 
 no doubt it will reveal many more secrets in time. 
 
 Color is useful to birds, as well as beautiful. 
 Its great use is to conceal them from their ene- 
 mies, and they show that they know this by their 
 conduct. 
 
 When a bird is of the color of dead leaves, or
 
 AMERICAN ROBIN
 
 <?r 
 
 >*9-t *fll <*,
 
 DIFFERENT COLORED SUITS 121 
 
 the sand, he has only to flatten himself and keep 
 still, and he is hidden. Such a bird on the nest 
 will often let one come close, and even stroke 
 her, while relying on her color to be unseen. A 
 sitting ruffed grouse will do so. But if snow 
 falls, the same bird is very wild, for she knows 
 she can be seen in the snow. 
 
 I have seen a striped bird, black and white 
 warbler, when frightened, flatten himself on a 
 branch, where he looked so much like the bark 
 that he could not be seen. 
 
 Ground birds are mostly in mottled colors of 
 the ground. The whip-poor-will, whose habit it 
 is to rest on a log all day, wears colors that hide 
 him as well as if he were under the log. 
 
 The striking colors on a bird are often hidden 
 when he is at rest, but show plainly when he 
 flies. When a flicker stands quietly on a fence 
 he is all in rather dull colors, but when he flies 
 he shows a large snow-white spot on his back, so 
 that as far as one can see him he may be known. 
 A meadowlark on the ground looks not unlike 
 a flicker, but when he flies he shows that the 
 outside feathers of his tail are white. This is as 
 striking a mark as the white spot on the flicker. 
 
 Many birds have such markings, and it is 
 thought by men who study birds and look for 
 a use in everything, that such marks serve the
 
 122 HOW HE IS MADE 
 
 purpose of " danger signals "or " recognition 
 marks." That by these birds can know each 
 other in the dusk, or that the flash of color will 
 catch the eye, when the bird does not wish to 
 give a call, but to slip away quietly to avoid 
 danger, and at the same time to give notice to 
 other birds to do the same.
 
 HIS RELATIONS WITH US
 
 xxvm 
 
 HOW HE WORKS FOR US 
 
 MANY times in this book I have spoken of the 
 great value of the services of birds, in helping us 
 destroy insects and weeds that injure our crops. 
 But there is more to be said about it. 
 
 From morning till night, almost the whole of 
 his life, nearly every bird is working for us. He 
 does not know he is working for us, of course. 
 He is simply hunting for the food he likes, and 
 what is good for young birds to eat. 
 
 But what he chooses to eat himself, and to 
 feed the young, consists mostly of creatures that 
 destroy our fruit and vegetables, caterpillars that 
 eat the leaves off our trees, worms that get into 
 our apples and berries, beetles that spoil our 
 roses and our potatoes, mice that eat our crops, 
 and all the worms and grubs that gardeners and 
 farmers are all the time fighting. 
 
 As I have already said, some of the birds like 
 cherries and green peas, and other things we 
 prefer to keep for ourselves. But we should
 
 126 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 never forget that they have earned, by their 
 work among the worms, all they can take. 
 
 I say this, not merely because I love the birds, 
 and want to have them live and be happy, but 
 because it is true. It has been proved true by 
 scientific men in the service of the United States 
 government. 
 
 These men have had thousands of birds killed 
 to see what they were eating, and have found 
 out that nearly all the birds they have exam- 
 ined blackbirds, cedar-birds, blue jays, hawks, 
 owls, even crows do us more good by the in- 
 jurious creatures they destroy, than harm by the 
 fruits and vegetables they eat. To this there 
 is, among the small birds, but one exception, the 
 English sparrow, and, of the large ones, only the 
 two hawks and one owl, mentioned on page 53. 
 
 Chickadees like to eat the eggs of canker- 
 worms ; and for a single meal, one of these tiny 
 birds will eat two hundred and fifty eggs, and 
 he will take several meals a day. Now canker- 
 worms destroy our apples. When they get into 
 an orchard in force, it looks, as Miss Merriam 
 says, as if it had been burned over. 
 
 Robins, catbirds, and shrikes, and several oth- 
 ers, like to eat cutworms, which destroy grass 
 and other plants. As many as three hundred of 
 them have been found in the stomach of one
 
 BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEES
 
 HOW HE WORKS FOR US 127 
 
 robin, of course for one meal. Ants are very 
 troublesome in many ways, and three thousand 
 of them have been taken from the stomach of 
 one flicker. 
 
 Rats and mice, ground squirrels and gophers, 
 make great havoc in our crops, and farmers 
 spend much time and labor trying to get rid of 
 them ; but these creatures are. the favorite food 
 of most hawks and owls. 
 
 If the farmer would stop shooting the birds, 
 and protect them instead, they would do this 
 work for him, and much better than he can. 
 But because (as I said in a former chapter) one 
 or two hawks and owls have a taste for chickens, 
 he generally kills every hawk and owl he sees, 
 and for this folly has to spend half his time try- 
 ing to kill the little animals they would gladly 
 have eaten. 
 
 A great deal of refuse, dead sea creatures, 
 and other matter, is thrown up on the seashore, 
 or floats on the water. On this feed the water 
 birds, herons, gulls, terns, and others. If this 
 were not disposed of, it would make us sick. 
 Indeed, on the shores where so many herons have 
 been killed, to get their plumes for ladies' hats, 
 the result has been sickness and death among 
 the people, as Dr. Gaumer, of Yucatan, told Mr, 
 Chapman.
 
 128 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 Besides the work they do for us in destroying 
 animal life, their seed-eating is almost as useful. 
 As I said, they eat the seeds of weeds that 
 farmers and gardeners are all the time laboring 
 to keep down, so that useful plants may have 
 a chance to grow. 
 
 The whole family of finches, sparrows, bunt- 
 ings, grosbeaks, and all birds with the high, 
 thick bill, though they eat largely of insects 
 through the summer, and feed their nestlings on 
 them, when insects get scarce and weed seeds 
 are ripe, turn to the latter for food. They eat 
 the seeds of all kinds of troublesome weeds ; and 
 as each single seed might produce a plant, we 
 cannot guess how much they destroy. 
 
 Professor Beal, who is at the head of this gov- 
 ernment inquiry into the food of birds, and who 
 knows what he is talking about, says that one 
 species of little bird the tree sparrow de- 
 stroys every year in one of the Western States, 
 many tons of the seeds of weeds. 
 
 There is a curious and interesting fact about 
 this seed-eating. The regular seed-eaters, the 
 finches, prefer the seeds of certain weeds, most 
 of them harmful; these they break up, taking 
 off the shells, and of course destroying the germ, 
 making it impossible for them to grow. 
 
 But there are many birds who eat berries hav-
 
 HOW HE WORKS FOR US 129 
 
 ing in them seeds, such as raspberries, blackber- 
 ries, and all kinds of wild fruit. These birds do 
 not crack the seeds ; and, as they are hard, they 
 do not digest in the stomach, but are dropped 
 whole, and are ready to grow wherever they 
 fall. 
 
 Thus, while seed-eating birds destroy the weeds 
 which are hurtful, the fruit-eaters plant the seeds 
 of berries and fruit which we like. That is why 
 we find wild berry bushes all over the country. 
 We have to thank the birds for it. 
 
 A great deal more could be said about the 
 birds' work for us, not only of the robins and 
 those I have spoken of, but cedar-birds, who 
 are shot because they take part of our cherries, 
 blackbirds, because they eat some grain, ori- 
 oles, because they occasionally take green peas, 
 and kingbirds, because they have the name of 
 eating bees, though it has been proved that they 
 eat only drones, which have no sting and make 
 no honey. 
 
 Let me impress upon you two facts. First, 
 the stories of the harm done by birds are often 
 mere guesswork, from careless observation. For 
 instance, a man seeing a bird going over his 
 blossoming fruit-trees, at once concludes he is 
 destroying the fruit, probably shoots him, and 
 then writes to his favorite paper that a certain
 
 130 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 bird eats fruit buds. Other papers copy it, and 
 a war against that bird begins in every orchard. 
 
 Whereas, the truth is, the bird was preserving 
 the fruit by picking out the insects that would 
 have spoiled it. This is no fancy picture ; this 
 very thing has happened more than once. 
 
 And again, whatever is said about the harm 
 this or that bird does, never forget this second 
 fact, which I repeat, and which may be relied 
 upon as perfectly trustworthy. The officers of 
 the government of the United States, who have 
 carefully studied the matter and found out posi- 
 tively, without guesswork, what birds eat, have 
 declared emphatically that every bird they have 
 examined does more good by destroying pests, 
 than harm to our crops, excepting only the bird 
 we have imported, the English or house spar 
 row.
 
 XXIX 
 
 HOW TO ATTRACT HIM ABOUT OUR HOMES 
 
 BECAUSE birds are so useful to us, as well as 
 because they are so interesting and so beautiful, 
 it is delightful to have them come about our 
 homes. And it is not at all difficult, for they 
 are easily taught to like us. 
 
 In countries where people are gentle, and try 
 to make birds happy, instead of shooting them 
 or throwing stones at them, they become very 
 tame. Mr. Hearn, who has written about Japan, 
 says that the fearlessness of wild creatures is one 
 of the most charming things about the remote 
 parts of Japan, " where tourists with shotguns 
 have not yet come." 
 
 Travelers who visit Norway tell us that birds 
 are never disturbed there, and they come freely 
 about the houses. When it is very cold they 
 even come into the houses for food and warmth, 
 and no one thinks of frightening them or trying 
 to catch them. 
 
 Even in our own country, Dr. Ridgway told
 
 132 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 me of a bird-lover in Florida who would not let 
 birds be annoyed on his place. As a result he 
 had a great many there, and they became very 
 tame. Cardinal grosbeaks, who are rather shy, 
 were so tame they would take food from his 
 hand. 
 
 A person living in the country, wishing to 
 draw the birds about his place, should begin by 
 protecting it. Cats should not, be allowed to 
 come near, English sparrows should be kept 
 down, and boys who shoot or throw stones should 
 be banished from the vicinity. 
 
 Next, trees and shrubs that birds like, for 
 nesting and for food, should be set out. For 
 nesting, a very attractive place for the smaller 
 species is a thick hedge of bushes, the thicker 
 and closer the better. 
 
 Nesting-boxes nailed up in trees please many, 
 and evergreen trees will draw, some that would 
 not come otherwise. For food, various berry- 
 bearing shrubs and trees should be provided, 
 such as chokecherry, shadberry, mulberry, and 
 others. 
 
 In a town or city, besides shrubs that birds 
 like, a high fence, with a top that cats cannot 
 walk on, is desirable, and a readiness to go to 
 their assistance is soon appreciated. 
 
 A friend told me a few days ago of a family
 
 HOW TO ATTRACT HIM ABOUT OUR HOMES 133 
 
 of wood thrushes who nested last summer in the 
 yard of her house in the city of Orange, N. J. 
 The birds soon found out that some of the fam- 
 ily would come to drive away strange cats which 
 came in. After they learned that, when a cat 
 appeared they would give a peculiar cry, unlike 
 any other heard from them. On hearing this, 
 one of the family always hurried out and drove 
 the enemy away. 
 
 If the birds could not get any response from 
 a call at the kitchen door, they would fly to the 
 front of the house, perch on the piazza rail, and 
 call till some one came out. All through nesting- 
 time they thus called on their friends for protec- 
 tion, and the delight the family had over the 
 nest and the friendly birds amply repaid them 
 for their trouble. 
 
 The one great necessity, in both city and 
 country, is water for drinking and bathing. It 
 should be in a shallow dish. The rough saucer 
 of a flower-pot is best, because the bird's feet 
 do not slip on it, and the edge is broad and round 
 and easy to perch on. 
 
 Next best is an earthen dish, with cleai 
 pebbles in the bottom, to prevent slipping, whidL 
 frightens them. Water should never be more 
 than two inches deep, but should always be clean, 
 and fresh two or three times a day.
 
 134 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 No food should be offered in summer, be- 
 cause we want them to get their natural food of 
 worms and seeds. 
 
 In the winter it is different. They should 
 have food regularly. But once used to having 
 their wants supplied, they will depend upon it, 
 and suffer and probably starve, if they are neg- 
 lected or forgotten. So one should be very 
 sure he will not get tired of it, before he teaches 
 them to expect food. 
 
 To feed them safely, a shelf must be placed 
 out of the reach of cats and bad boys. On the 
 sill of a window is a good place, or the roof of 
 a piazza, or a little balcony. Breakfast should 
 be served to them at the same hour every day, 
 and they will soon know when to come for it. 
 
 For food, they will eat any table scraps of 
 meat, and vegetables, and bread, chopped fine, 
 and most kinds of grain, broken up, or crushed, 
 for the smaller birds. 
 
 But the thing they all like best of everything 
 is raw suet, as it comes from the butcher. A 
 large piece may be wired or nailed in place, so 
 that it may be picked at and not displaced, or it 
 may be chopped fine and scattered on the shelf, 
 like other food. All birds are fond of this. 
 
 In winter they need water, and it should then, 
 also, be fresh.
 
 HOW TO ATTRACT HIM ABOUT OUR HOMES 135 
 
 A lady living in southern Ohio, who has for 
 several years given a breakfast to the birds 
 every day in winter, told me that her daily 
 guests last season were hairy and downy wood- 
 peckers, nuthatches, white and red-breasted, one 
 young kinglet, a pair of chickadees, tufted tit- 
 mice, blue jays, juncos, cardinal grosbeaks, Caro- 
 lina wrens, and sparrows. 
 
 This delightful company came regularly for 
 breakfast, and to pay her, sang nearly through 
 the season. 
 
 In the latitude of New York there are about 
 forty birds who spend the winter, and of course 
 there are more as one goes south. In the 
 Southern States, many of our northern birds 
 may be studied in the winter.
 
 XXX 
 
 HOW TO STUDY HIM 
 
 AN attractive thing about bird study is the 
 fact that there is still so much to be found out. 
 
 Men have been studying the dead bird for 
 many years. All about the body is well known. 
 The way he is made, the arrangement of his 
 bones and his organs, are plainly set forth in 
 the books, in words and pictures. 
 
 The shape and colors of his plumage, how 
 many feathers belong to his wing and tail, his 
 length, his extent, the shape of his beak and 
 his foot, all these facts are to be found in 
 every Ornithology. 
 
 Some of his most easily noted habits, too, are 
 familiar; where and when he nests, where he 
 spends his time, and where he goes in the winter, 
 what he eats, and when he changes his dress. 
 
 But really to know the living bird, to make 
 acquaintance with the individual, to see his fam- 
 ily life, his manners, his intelligence, his powers, 
 this kind of study has hardly begun.
 
 ' HOW TO STUDY HIM 137 
 
 This almost new and most attractive field is 
 open to us to-day. It offers a charming study, 
 with the added interest of discoveries to be 
 made. Nor is it so hard as most persons think. 
 
 In the beginning there are two things to 
 learn : first, how to study from life ; and second, 
 how to identify without killing. To study is 
 simply to observe closely and carefully, and to 
 report accurately. 
 
 Take a little lesson in observing : When you 
 see a bird do not merely gaze idly at him, but 
 take note of everything about him. What he 
 is doing, how he is doing it, and all his points, 
 his size and shape, his colors and markings. 
 
 If he is getting food, as he most often is, 
 see whether he picks it from the tree trunk or 
 gathers it from grass tops ; whether he hunts it 
 among leaves, bores the bark, drops to the 
 ground, or sails out into the air for it. 
 
 Then try to discover what it is insect or 
 seed, beetle, grub, or worm and what he does 
 with it, swallow it at once, beat it tp death, or 
 hold it in his mouth uneaten. 
 
 Then notice his manners, if he stands still, 
 or jerks his tail or body ; if he flits about the 
 branches, hovers before a flower, or hammers at 
 the door of an unlucky grub behind the bark. 
 Next, does he walk or hop ? does he chatter 01
 
 138 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 keep silent? fly straight, or go bounding in 
 great waves through the air ? All these things 
 you must learn to see, and to note down the mo- 
 ment you do so, so that you will not be uncer- 
 tain or confused when you take your books to 
 see who he is. 
 
 Then you must take note of his size, and to 
 do this as it is hard to judge of inches it is 
 well to have in mind a sort of index of size 
 to which you can compare him. Take the most 
 common and best-known birds for standards, the 
 robin, the English sparrow, and one smaller, 
 the wren, or the " chebec " (least flycatcher). 
 When you see a bird, if he is as big as a robin, 
 enter in your note : " Size, robin." Should he 
 be a little smaller, yet still larger than your 
 measure, the English sparrow, you can 
 note it, " Size, robin ," the minus sign mean- 
 ing that it is less. If he were larger, you would 
 put the plus sign : "Size, robin +." 
 
 Observe the shape, whether it is slim like an 
 oriole, or chunky like a chickadee ; also any 
 peculiarity of plumage, as a crest, specially long 
 or strangely formed tail feathers; the end of 
 the tail, whether square, rounded, pointed, or 
 notched. 
 
 Then notice the beak ; its length compared to 
 the head, its shape and color. If it is high and
 
 HOW TO STUDY HIM 
 
 139 
 
 FIG. 18. 
 Canadian Warbler. 
 
 thick, like a canary's or spar- 
 row's, the bird is a seed- 
 eater ; if long and straight, 
 like a robin's, he is an in- 
 sect-eater; if sharp and flat, 
 opening very wide like a 
 swallow's, he is a flycatcher. 
 
 Lastly, note the plumage, 
 the general color, then spe- 
 cial markings, such as bars 
 on wings or tail, a ring 
 around the eye (Fig. 18), or 
 a line over or through the 
 eye (Fig. 19), white or black 
 throat (Fig. 20 or 19), 
 speckled or striped breast 
 (Fig. 18), or any conspicu- 
 ous blotch. Every point 
 must be set down the mo- 
 ment you notice it. You 
 cannot trust your memory. 
 
 With these full notes, re- 
 turn to your study and take 
 your manual to find out his 
 name, or to identify. 
 
 Many persons think that 
 in order to know a bird, and especially to find 
 out his name, one must have him in the hand, 
 
 FIG. 19. 
 
 Black-throated Green 
 Warbler. 
 
 FIG. 20. 
 White-throated Sparrow.
 
 140 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 count his wing and tail feathers, and measure 
 his length. Excepting for exact scientific pur- 
 poses, this is not at all necessary. Almost any 
 bird in America may be perfectly identified with- 
 out touching him, indeed, while he is in the 
 enjoyment of 'his liberty in a tree. For birds 
 have marked external differences, which are 
 carefully set down in the books. 
 
 The modern manuals, too, are usually fur- 
 nished with a color key, the use of which is fully 
 explained in them. With the help of this you 
 will have little trouble in naming your bird. 
 
 Above all, be exact in your knowledge and 
 do not jump at conclusions. If you see a bird 
 on a fruit-tree picking about the blossoms, do 
 not decide offhand that he is spoiling the fruit ; 
 look closely to see if he is not, instead, clearing 
 it of worms that would destroy it all. When 
 you notice a bird in a strawberry bed, do not 
 instantly conclude that he is after strawberries ; 
 he does n't care half so much for berries as he 
 does for insects, and very often he is engaged in 
 ridding the plants of pests, at the moment that 
 he is scared off or shot by a careless person, who 
 does not wait to see whether he is friend or foe. 
 
 Although patience and clear eyes alone will 
 open many delightful secrets of bird life, a good 
 opera glass will do still more. It will bring you
 
 
 MEADOWLARK
 
 HOW TO STUDY HIM 141 
 
 nearer to the bird without frightening him. 
 You can see thus much better, not only his 
 markings, but what he is doing. In a word, 
 you can be more sure of your facts. 
 
 In deciding upon the actions of a bird, never 
 guess at anything. If you see a pair very busy 
 about a shrub, you may be sure they have a 
 nest there, but do not so record it till you have 
 actually seen the nest. Even then you should 
 not conclude at once that it belongs to them ; 
 I have seen birds sit a few moments in nests 
 which did not belong to them as if to try 
 them. You may feel very sure what a bird 
 means by an action, but you should set down 
 only what he does. Without this care, your 
 records will be worthless. 
 
 Do not discourage yourself by trying to find 
 the name of every tiny atom in feathers that you 
 see ; indeed, little birds flitting about the tree- 
 tops mostly warblers will be hard for you 
 to identify, and almost impossible to watch. I 
 advise you to confine your study at first to the 
 larger and less lively birds, kingbirds, robins, 
 thrushes, phoebes, bluebirds, orioles, goldfinches, 
 and others, all of which you will find near to 
 houses and easy to study. Do not expect too 
 much at once, nor give up in despair if you can- 
 not identify the first bird you see.
 
 142 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 You may be sure that every hour you hon- 
 estly give to the study will make it more inter- 
 esting; every hird you learn to know will be 
 like a new and delightful companion. 
 
 You will lose your desire to take life or even 
 to steal eggs from them ; the country will have 
 new charms for you ; in fact, a person blessed 
 with a love of the study of birds or beasts or 
 insects possesses a lifelong and inexhaustible 
 source of interest and happiness. 
 
 In regard to a manual, there are now so many 
 to be had, one hardly knows how to select. I 
 will mention only two or three, which have par- 
 ticular points of value. 
 
 A good book to begin with, for residents of 
 New England, New York, and the Eastern 
 Middle States, is Professor Willcox's " Land 
 Birds of New England " (Lee & Shepard, Bos- 
 ton. Price 60 cts., by mail). 
 
 Although this little book treats of only 
 ninety birds, they are the most common, and its 
 value is its simplicity, and the ease with which 
 its color key enables one to identify the birds it 
 treats. It introduces a beginner to the larger 
 works in a most pleasing way. 
 
 A good general work for Eastern North 
 America, thoroughly trustworthy and not too 
 technical in its use of terms, treating all the
 
 
 HOW TO STUDY HIM 143 
 
 birds of the locality, is Chapman's " Handbook 
 of the Birds of Eastern North America " (Ap- 
 pleton, New York. Price $3.00). It has a 
 color key and a color chart, by which one may 
 see what is meant by colors named. 
 
 Especially attractive to ladies and amateurs, 
 for its charming accounts of bird life, is Mrs. 
 Wright's "Birdcraft" (Macmillan, New York. 
 Price, $3.00). It treats but two hundred spe- 
 cies, but that includes the birds usually seen in 
 the New England and Northern Middle States. 
 It has a color key. 
 
 The whole United States is covered by Dr. 
 Coues's " Key to North American Birds," latest 
 edition (Estes & Lauriat, Boston. Price $7.50). 
 It is not quite so easy for the beginner, but it 
 is untechnical in style, and fully illustrated. 
 
 One book deserving mention because of its 
 value as an aid to teachers is Miss Merriam's 
 " Birds of Village and Field " (Houghton, Mif- 
 flin & Co., Boston. Price $2.00). It is ex- 
 ceptionally rich in facts and statistics relating 
 to the economic value of birds. It treats nearly 
 two hundred of the most common birds. 
 
 A book intended for identification only is 
 Professor Apgar's " Birds of the United States " 
 (American Book Company, New York. Price 
 $2.00). It is the result of his experience as
 
 144 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
 
 teacher, and has several new features very help- 
 ful to beginners, such as small cuts at the bot- 
 tom of pages to explain terms, thus showing 
 exactly what is meant, for example, by " wing 
 bars " or " rounded tail." It also gives hints 
 about the usual locality of a bird, whether creep- 
 ing over a tree trunk, on the wing, or elsewhere. 
 It takes particular note of size, having one sec- 
 tion for birds about the size of an English spar- 
 row, and so on. The pronunciation of the Latin 
 names is carefully indicated. There are several 
 chapters giving descriptions of the external parts 
 of a bird, and there is a glossary of scientific 
 terms. 
 
 The following list of points to observe in 
 watching birds has been used to advantage by 
 classes in bird study. A little familiarity with 
 this will help one to remember what to look for. 
 
 A similar, but fuller and more elaborate, list 
 has been prepared, and bound up in tablets, to 
 use in the field. It is for sale by Miss J. A. 
 Clark, 1322 Twelfth Street, N. W., Washing- 
 ton, D. C.
 
 POINTS TO OBSERVE 
 
 1. Locality tree : bush : ground. 
 
 2. Size compared to robin : English sparrow. 
 
 3. Form long : short : slender : plump. 
 
 4. Beak high : stout : wide : hooked : long : lobes : 
 
 drawn down. 
 
 5. Tail length : shape at end. 
 
 6. Legs long : short : scales. 
 
 7. Toes webbed : how turned : hind claw long. 
 
 8. Color bright : striking : dull : plain. 
 
 9. Markings on head : breast : wing : tail : back. 
 
 10. Manners walk : hop : quiet : active : noisy : silent. 
 
 11. Habits eating seeds : berries : insects : from 
 
 ground : tree trunk : leaves. 
 
 12. Song long : short : continuous : broken. 
 
 13. Flight direct: undulating: fluttering: labored. 
 
 14. Nest where placed : shape : materials : eggs. 
 
 15. Young plumage : behavior.
 
 INDEX 
 
 AFFECTIONS, 73-82. 
 
 Air-sacs, 92,94. 
 
 Arrival in spring, 3, 4. 
 
 Attraction and protection of birds, 131- 
 
 135. 
 
 Audubon, John James, 60. 
 Auks, 110. 
 
 Beak, 95-97. 
 Blackbird, crow, 72. 
 ? Blackbirds, 3, 126, 129. 
 Bluebird, arrival, 3 ; getting food for 
 
 young, 17 ; teaching young to fly, 37, 
 
 38 ; feeding, 50. 
 Bobolink, nest of, 9 ; one of the first 
 
 birds to stop singing in summer, 47 ; 
 
 the fall migration, 61, 62. 
 Bob-white (quail), 44, 59. 
 Body, shape of, 91. 
 Bolles, Frank, his pet owl, 101, 116; 
 
 his story of a heron, 103, 104. 
 Bones, 92, 94. 
 
 Books about birds, 142-144. 
 Brooding, 13-16. 
 Buzzard, turkey, 50, 51. 
 
 Canary, 20, 57, 81. 
 
 Cardinal, 69, 132. 
 
 Catbird, food of, 49, 126; jerking the 
 
 tail, 113. 
 
 v Cedar-bird, feeding young, 19 ; story of 
 affection for young, 78 ; usefulness to 
 man, 126, 129. 
 
 Chewink, 76, 77. 
 
 Chickadee, defending eggs, 11, 12; get- 
 ting food for young, 18 ; as an eater 
 
 of insects' eggs, 68, 126 ; affection for 
 young, 78. 
 
 Color in feathers, 120. See Plumage. 
 
 Cormorant, 94. 
 
 Crop, 93. 
 
 Crossbill, 97. 
 
 Crow, punishing a young one, 37 ; sleep- 
 ing in flocks, 59, 60 ; story of an affec- 
 tionate, 80 ; usefulness to man, 126. 
 
 Down, the first plumage, 15, 21, 22, 
 
 115. 
 Ducks, 97, 115. 
 
 Ears, 102-104. 
 
 Eggs, beauty of, 11 ; the mother's care, 
 
 11, 12 ; incubation and hatching of, 
 
 13-15. 
 Eyes, 100-102. 
 
 Feather tracts, 22, 23. 
 
 Feathers, their first appearance on the 
 
 young bird, 22 ; of the wing, 109-111; 
 
 of the tail, 112, 113 ; the various kinds 
 
 of, 114, 115 ; expression of emotions 
 
 by, 116; the birds' care of the, 116 : 
 
 117. See Plumage. 
 Feet, 92, 105-108. 
 Fish, birds and dead, 86, 87. 
 r Flicker, method of feeding young, 18 ; 
 
 food of, 85, 127 ; color markings, 121. 
 Flying, 93. 
 Food, 48-55; in winter, 67-69, 134; in 
 
 its relation to the welfare of man, 
 
 125-130. 
 Frigate-bird, 110.
 
 148 
 
 IXDEX 
 
 Geese, 98, 99. 
 
 Goldfinch, American, 14 ; story of canary 
 * and, 20; change of color, 26; food, 
 
 51 ; flocking, 71. 
 Goldfinch, European, 79. 
 Grouse, 58, 59, 110. 
 Grouse, ruffed, 111. 
 Gullet, 93. 
 Gulls, 101. 
 
 x ,/Hawks, food of, 52, 53, 126, 127 ; asleep, 
 59 ; beaks of, 97 ; eyesight of, IjJi ; 
 feet of, 106. 
 
 Heligoland, 101. 
 
 Herons, food of, 53, 127 ; bills of, 97 ; 
 story of the hearing of a heron, 103, 
 104 ; usefulness to man, 127. 
 ,, Hummingbird, ruby-throated, absence 
 of male from nest, 16; method of 
 feeding young, 18. 
 
 Hummingbirds, 15, 98. 
 
 Identification, 137-141. 
 Indigo-bird, 47. 
 Instinct, 83. 
 Intelligence, 83-87. 
 
 Japan, 131. 
 
 , Jay, blue, learning to fly, 31, 32 ; storing 
 food, 54 ; story of a mischievous, 55, 
 56 ; usefulness to man, 126. 
 
 Kindness of birds to each other, 74-77. 
 ' Kingbird, 14, 129. 
 Kingfisher, 21, 115. 
 
 Language, 43-47. 
 Legs, 92, 105, 107, 108. 
 
 Meadowlark, 45, 119, 121. 
 Migration, 61-68. 
 Mockingbird, 45. 
 Moulting, 25, 26, 118. 
 
 Neck, 92. 
 
 Nests, situations of, 9 ; materials of, 9, 
 
 10; building of, 10; seldom used 
 
 more than once, 10, 11. 
 
 Nighthawk, 107. 
 Norway, 131. 
 Nuthatches, 18, 96, 98. 
 
 Observation, 137-141, 145. 
 
 Oil, 117. 
 
 Oriole, nest of, 9, 95 ; getting food fo* 
 
 young, 18 ; teaching young to fly, 33, 
 
 34 ; food of, 50 ; affection for young, 
 
 78 ; usefulness to man, 129. 
 Ostrich, 24. 
 
 Ostrich, South American, 24. 
 Owl, barred, 101. 
 Owls, 35 ; food of, 52, 53, 127 ; ears of, 
 
 103 ; feet of,. 106 ; usefulness to man, 
 
 126, 127. 
 
 Penguin, 72. 
 
 Petrel, 110. 
 
 Pewee, wood, 47. 
 
 Phoebe, 35. ^ 
 
 Pigeons, 79, 80. 
 
 Plumage, the nestling, 22, 2S; colora- 
 tion of, 23, 24, 27, 28 ; moulting, 25, 
 26, 118; change of color without 
 moulting, 26, 27, 118-120; protective 
 coloration of, 120, 121 ; recognition 
 marks in, 121, 122. 
 
 Protection and attraction of birds, 131- 
 135. 
 
 Quail (bob-white), 44, 59. 
 
 Redstart, American, 14. 
 
 Regurgitation, 18, 19. 
 
 Rhea, 24. 
 
 Robin, American, arrival, 3 ; 10, 15, 17, 
 18, 21 ; plumage of young, 23 ; 34 ; 
 teaching young to bathe, 38, 39 ; notes 
 of, 44, 45; food of, 49, 126, 127 ; roost- 
 ing in flocks, 60 ; devotion to younp. 
 78 ; story of the intelligence of a, 84 ; 
 102; usefulness to man, 126, 127, l-'9 
 
 Sapsucker, 85 ; tail of , 113. 
 Shrikes, 126. 
 Sleeping, 57-60. 
 Song, 14, 44-47. 
 Sparrow, chipping, 54.
 
 INDEX 
 
 149 
 
 Sparrow, English, learning canary's 
 song, 46; young fed by a wren, 81, 
 82 ; harmfulness of, 126, 130, 132. 
 
 Sparrow, song, arrival, 3 ; nest, 9 ; u> 
 dividuality in songs, 45 ; 47. 
 
 Sparrow, tree, 58, 128. 
 
 Sparrow, white-throated, 54. 
 
 Sparrows, 84, 97. 
 
 Stomach, 93. 
 
 Swallow, bank, 96. 
 
 Swallow, barn, 71, 96. 
 
 Swallow, eave, 71. 
 
 Swallows, food of, 17, 35, 50 ; flocking, 
 62, 71 ; story of young, 75 ; story show- 
 ing intelligence, 85 ; wings of, 110. 
 
 Swift, chimney, sleeping, 59, 60 ; devo- 
 tion to young, 78 ; tail of, 113. 
 
 Tail, 112, 113. 
 Tanager, scarlet, 79. 
 Thrasher, 113. 
 Thrush, wood, 133. 
 Tongue, 97, 98. 
 
 Usefulness of birds to man, 125-130. 
 
 Veery, 47. 
 
 Vireo, red-eyed, 47. 
 
 Warbler, black and white, 121. 
 
 Warbler, yellow, 50. 
 
 Warblers, 62, 97. 
 
 Water, birds in, 94; for drinking and 
 
 bathing, 133, 134. 
 Whip-poor-will, 107, 121. 
 Wings, 109-112. 
 Winter, birds in, 66-69. 
 Woodcock, beak of, 96 ; whistling sound 
 
 of wings, 111. 
 Woodpecker, downy, 50. 
 Woodpecker, red-headed, 85. 
 Woodpecker, yellow-bellied, 85. 
 Woodpeckers, 18, 21 ; teaching young 
 
 to feed itself, 35, 36; food of, 50; 
 
 storing food, 54, 55; sleeping, 59; 85, 
 
 86 ; beaks of, 95 ; tongues of, 98 ; 103; 
 
 feet of, 106 ; tails of, 113. 
 Wren, house, 81, 82. 
 
 Young birds, hatching of, 13-15 ; feed- 
 ing of, 16-20; first plumage of, 21- 
 23 ; learning to fly ,29-34, 37-39 ; the 
 mother's anxiety about, 30-32 ; learn- 
 ing to feed themselves, 34-36, 39; 
 learning to sing, 36 ; after leaving the 
 nest, 70-73.
 
 Job D ae 
 
 Mend by Time. 
 
 Stab by No. Sect Sew by 
 
 Score Press Strip Sect 
 
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 pany, Los Angeles, specialists In Library Binding. 
 Our work and materials are guaranteed to wear 
 Indefinitely to satisfaction of purchaser, and any 
 defects appearing In either will be made good with- 
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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below
 
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