IN THE FIELD
Winter is an ideal time to begin bird-study, because there are no leaves and because the birds are few and not difficult to identify. If you learn the winter birds thoroughly, you will be ready for the rush of the spring as old favorites return and new friends appear.
Midsummer is often a disappointing season because birds are silent and in poor feather. At this time you will be able to study the plumages of the young birds, however, and you will find much of interest in watching the affairs of family life. Migrant shore-birds should be watched during late summer.
Fall is the season of trials. Now come the restless, sombre-colored hordes, most of them silent save for a few brief call-notes. When you can easily identify all the fall birds, you are a pretty good ornithologist.
In approaching a bird, common sense will warn you that you should be as quiet as possible. You should be obscurely dressed, and if you can go under, around, or between bushes, rather than through them, you will cause less disturbance. Often the best way to study birds is to find a pleasant, somewhat hidden spot and remain there for an hour, watching all that comes by. A good bird student, in the course of his walk, will try to visit as many different kinds of country as he can; he will visit the ponds and marshes, the grape-vine thickets, the open fields, and the hemlock woods of his neighborhood. He knows that in these different regions he is likely to find different birds. In fact, unless he does carefully study all of these regions, he is not thoroughly studying the bird-life of his locality.
You may have trouble in seeing some birds, though you pursue them ever so tirelessly. Try kissing the back of your hand in such a manner as to imitate the cries of a young or wounded bird. This sound will often arouse the curiosity of the wariest bird and he will come close. I thus made a squeaking sound once and a Robin hit me with full force on the neck; she was so convinced that I had one of her young in my dreaded clutches that she gave stern battle! These squeaking cries sometimes draw even the birds of prey.