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I write these few introductory sentences
to this volume only to second so worthy an
attempt to quicken and enlarge the general
interest in our birds. The book itself is
merely an introduction, and is only designed
to place a few clews in the reader's hands
which he himself or herself is to follow
up. I can say that it is reliable and is
written in a vivacious strain and by a real
bird lover, and should prove a help and a
stimulus to any one who seeks by the aid
of its pages to become better acquainted
with our songsters. The various grouping
of the birds according to color, season,
habitat, etc., ought to render the identification
of the birds, with no other weapon than an
opera glass, an easy matter.
When I began the study of the birds I had
access to a copy of Audubon, which greatly
stimulated my interest in the pursuit, but
I did not have the opera glass, and I could
not take Audubon with me on my walks, as
the reader may this volume.
But you do not want to make out your bird
the first time; the book or your friend must
not make the problem too easy for you. You
must go again and again, and see and hear
your bird under varying conditions and get
a good hold of several of its characteristic
traits. Things easily learned are apt to
be easily forgotten. Some ladies, beginning
the study of birds, once wrote to me, asking
if I would not please come and help them,
and set them right about certain birds in
dispute. I replied that that would be getting
their knowledge too easily; that what I and
any one else told them they would be very
apt to forget, but that the things they found
out themselves they would always remember.
We must in a way earn what we have or keep.
Only thus does it become ours, a real part
of us.
Not very long afterward I had the pleasure
of walking with one of the ladies, and I
found her eye and ear quite as sharp as my
own, and that she was in a fair way to conquer
the bird kingdom without any outside help.
She said that the groves and fields, through
which she used to walk with only a languid
interest, were now completely transformed
to her and afforded her the keenest pleasure;
a whole new world of interest had been disclosed
to her; she felt as if she was constantly
on the eve of some new discovery; the next
turn in the path might reveal to her a new
warbler or a new vireo. I remember the thrill
she seemed to experience when I called her
attention to a purple finch singing in the
tree-tops in front of her house, a rare visitant
she had not before heard. The thrill would
of course have been greater had she identified
the bird without my aid. One would rather
bag one's own game, whether it be with a
bullet or an eyebeam.
The experience of this lady is the experience
of all in whom is kindled this bird enthusiasm.
A new interest is added to life; one more
resource against ennui and stagnation. If
you have only a city yard with a few sickly
trees in it, you will find great delight
in noting the numerous stragglers from the
great army of spring and autumn migrants
that find their way there. If you live in
the country, it is as if new eyes and new
ears were given you, with a correspondingly
increased capacity for rural enjoyment.
The birds link themselves to your memory
of seasons and places, so that A song, a
call, a gleam of color, set going a sequence
of delightful reminiscences in your mind.
When a solitary great Carolina wren came
one August day and took up its abode near
me and sang and called and warbled as I had
heard it long before on the Potomac, how
it brought the old days, the old scenes back
again, and made me for the moment younger
by all those years!
A few seasons ago I feared the tribe of bluebirds
were on the verge of extinction from the
enormous number of them that perished from
cold and hunger in the South in the winter
of 1894. For two summers not a blue wing,
not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something
kindred and precious from my environment
-- the visible embodiment of the tender sky
and the wistful soil. What a loss, I said,
to the coming generations of dwellers in
the country -- no bluebird in the spring!
What will the farm-boy date from? But the
fear was groundless: the birds are regaining
their lost ground; broods of young blue-coats
are again seen drifting from stake to stake
or from mullen-stalk to mullen-stalk about
the fields in summer, and our April air will
doubtless again be warmed and thrilled by
this lovely harbinger of spring.
-- JOHN BURROUGHS, August 19, 1897
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