“A good observer is quick to take a hint and follow it up.”—John Burroughs.
The identification of birds depends quite as much upon accurate observation of their size, motions, flight, characteristic attitudes, manner of feeding, company, song, call-notes and haunts, as upon details of form and color. Especial care is necessary to insure correct estimates of size for the reason that living birds often appear smaller to the unpracticed eye than they actually are. The familiar English Sparrow is a convenient standard of size because it is usually at hand in our city parks for instant reference. Remembering that it is 6 inches long a practical though rough division of wild birds may be made as follows:—
1. Birds smaller than the English Sparrow. 2. Birds about the size of the English Sparrow. 3. Birds decidedly larger than the English Sparrow.
If a few general characteristics of the principal bird-families be kept in mind, and these are quickly and almost unconsciously learned, the identity of a strange bird may usually be narrowed down to a few possibilities. For example:
[Woodpeckers] climb up and down the trunks of trees bracing with their tails and tapping the bark vigorously;
[Nuthatches] are smaller than woodpeckers and have much the same habit of climbing up and down tree-trunks but with a freer wig-wagging motion, often descending head downward;
[Flycatchers] sit erect with drooping tails, watching alertly for insect prey upon which they pounce in mid-air, afterwards returning to their perch;
[Swallows] skim through the air in graceful and long sustained flights;
[Sparrows] have stout seed-cracking bills, feed upon the ground, seldom fly high or far at a time and are for the most part fine songsters;
[Warblers] are tiny, tireless, gaily-colored explorers of the twigs of trees and bushes;