If you are a lover of the birds, the warm days of early March will sharpen your eyes for the first sight of those heralds of the spring, the Robin and the Bluebird.
Their cheery call notes, glad music to your ears, are but the prelude to the great chorus which will swell day by day […]
While the great majority of birds seem to accept joyfully the duties and cares incident to the building of a nest and the rearing of their brood, we have among our summer visitors one notable exception.
During the last days of March there arrives from the South a bird of which it is difficult to say […]
The early spring days will also bring a fine singer, a member of that famous family of vocalists, the Sparrow. Although called the Field Sparrow, this bird is more often found in a pasture overgrown with bushes, or along the edge of the woods where cedars grow. He is a little shy, just enough so […]
Another bird which is due to arrive soon after these early comers is the Flicker, a Woodpecker that can boast of at least thirty-six names. Chief among these are Yellowhammer, High-hole, and Golden-winged Woodpecker.
They live much in the open about groves and the edges of the forest, and so are the best-known and most‑admired members […]
When you are studying the Robin and Bluebird, if you visit a swampy thicket or rick of tangled vines and bushes growing beside an old stone wall, you will hear a rustling and rattling in the dead leaves so loud that you will think a flock of hens has strayed from some nearby farmyard.
On close […]
Soon after the Bluebirds and Robins, arrives that welcome visitor, the Song Sparrow, whose tuneful lay may be heard from every copse and bunch of shrubbery. With these, but quite unlike them, come the Grackles, or Crow Blackbirds.
They are of two kinds, the Purple Grackle and the Bronzed Grackle. The male of the former variety […]
A good example of the influence of amiable ways and gentle manners in making friends is seen in the Phoebe, a bird which possesses neither unusual skill as a singer nor brilliancy of plumage, yet is always attractive.
The Phoebe, or Bridge Pewee, as it is sometimes called, is quite in contrast to the Cowbird in […]
With the Flicker comes one of the most charming of the American songsters, the Purple Finch. They travel in small flocks and may be found with Goldfinches and Sparrows in small patches of wood or in low bushes by the Brookside.
Later in the season we find them in the orchard, where it is said they […]
Where the brook with its fringe of reeds and sedges winds in and out through the meadow, or in the swampy pasture with its evergreen thickets and ricks of alder, you will find in the early April days a small, brown-streaked bird which will spring up in front of you, and as it flies will […]
With the Field Sparrow comes another member of the family, also a good singer, the Vesper Sparrow. This is a bird of the broad open fields and roadsides, where it may easily be recognized by the white outer tail feathers seen when in flight. He flies up ahead of you, drops again in the grass, […]