In Bird Land

Although the young birds have the whole world for their larder, with victuals just to their taste constantly at their elbow, they must learn even the art of eating, and, until t...

On the same day my dancing dot in feathers, the golden-crowned kinglet, performed one of his favorite tricks, which is not often described in the books. You will remember that i...

Had Mr. Lowell never written anything but “A Good Word for Winter,” he would still have deserved a place in the front rank of American writers. What a genuine appreciation of Na...

It would seem, therefore, that to be a poet does not always give one the coign of vantage in observing Nature, but may, on the contrary, prove a positive disadvantage. Should th...

Sometimes an entirely foreign tint is introduced into the plumage of the young bird during his transition state. One day I was surprised to observe a decidedly bluish cast on th...

In a quiet retreat just beyond a steep-graded railway-track the black-throated green warblers were very abundant and unusually rollicksome. It was strange how they could dash ab...

A discovery was also made in regard to the sleeping-apartments of the red-headed woodpecker. As the dusk was gathering, a red-head dashed in front of me into the border of the w...

On the same day, not far distant, another bush-sparrow’s nest was found in some bushes, placed about three feet from the ground. In a few weeks there were babies five in the gol...

Standing on a platform on the other side of the pond, were two more large, almost gigantic pelicans, not of the same species as the two just mentioned, having no tufts on their...

Farther on in the woods, another cunning little junco proved himself no lay figure. It seemed, in fact, to be a junco day. When I first espied him, he was standing in the snow b...

Every observer of birds and animals has doubtless amassed many facts of intense interest—at all events, of intense interest to himself—which he has not been able to adjust to an...

Indeed, the procession seemed to be especially musical during that spring. One day, in the last week in April, a new style of music rang out at the border of the woods, and I fa...

In a deep gorge, cut through the country by a small creek—small now, at least—on its way to the river, two curious bird calls were heard; but one bird kept himself hidden in a d...

But for birds that invariably choose old mother earth for the foundation of their houses, commend me to the American meadow-larks. In this respect they are certainly groundlings...

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then, as I am listening now! Percy B. Shelley: _To a...

“June’s bridesman, poet o’ the year, Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here; Half-hid in tip-top apple-bloom he sings, Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin’ wings, Or, gi...