III
A boy brought me a dead bird the other morning which his father had picked up on the railroad. It had probably been killed by striking the telegraph wires. As it was a bird the like of which he had never seen before, he wanted to know its name. It was a wee bird, mottled gray and brown like nearly all our ground birds, as the sparrows, the meadowlark, the quail: a color that makes the bird practically invisible to its enemies in the air above. Unlike the common sparrows, its little round wings were edged with yellow, with a tinge of yellow on its shoulders; hence its name, the yellow-winged sparrow. It has also a yellowish line over the eye. It is by no means a common bird, though there are probably few farms in the Middle and Eastern States upon which one could not be found. It is one of the birds to be looked for. Ordinary observers do not see it or hear it.
It is small, shy, in every way inconspicuous. Its song is more like that of an insect than that of any other of our birds. If you hear in the fields in May and June a fine, stridulous song like that of a big grasshopper, it probably proceeds from this bird. Move in the direction of it and you will see the little brown bird flit a few yards before you. For several mornings lately I have heard and seen one on a dry, gravelly hillock in a field. Each time he has been near the path where I walk. Unless your ear is on the alert you will miss his song. Amid the other
bird songs of May heard afield it is like a tiny, obscure plant amid tall, rank growths. The bird affords a capital subject for the country boy, or town boy, either, when he goes to the country, to exercise his powers of observation upon. If he finds this bird he will find a good many other interesting things. He may find the savanna sparrow also, which closely resembles the bird he is looking for. It is a trifle larger, has more bay about the wings, and is more common toward the coast. Its yellow markings are nearly the same. There is also a variety of the yellow-winged sparrow called Henslow's yellow-winged sparrow, but it bears so close a resemblance to the first-named that it requires a professional ornithologist to distinguish them. I confess I have never identified it.
I never see the yellow-wing without being reminded of a miniature meadowlark. Its short tail, its round wings, its long and strong legs and feet, its short beak, its mottled coat, the touch of yellow, as if he had just rubbed against a newly-opened dandelion, but in this case on the wings instead of on the breast, the quality of its voice, and its general shape and habits, all suggest a tiny edition of this large emphatic walker of our meadows.
The song of this little sparrow is like the words "chick, chick-a-su-su," uttered with a peculiar buzzing sound. Its nest is placed upon the ground in the open field, with four or five speckled eggs. The eggs are rounder and their ground color whiter than the eggs of other sparrows.
I do not know whether this kind walks or hops. This would be an interesting point for the young observer to determine. All the other sparrows known to me are hoppers, but from the unusually long and strong legs of this species, its short tail and erect manner, I more than half suspect it is a walker. If so, this adds another meadowlark feature.
Let the young observer follow up and identify any one bird, and he will be surprised to find how his love and enthusiasm for birds will kindle. He will not stop with the one bird. Carlyle wrote in a letter to his brother, "Attempt to explain what you do know, and you already know something more." Bring what powers of observation you already have to bear upon animate nature, and already your powers are increased. You can double your capital and more in a single season.
The first among the less common birds which I identified when I began the study of ornithology was the red-eyed vireo, the little gray bird with a line over its eye that moves about with its incessant cheerful warble all day, rain or shine, among the trees, and it so fired my enthusiasm that before the end of the season I had added a dozen or more (to me) new birds to my list. After a while the eye and ear become so sensitive and alert that they seem to see and hear of themselves, and like sleepless sentinels report to you whatever comes within their range. Driving briskly along the road the other day, I saw a phœbe-bird building her nest under a cliff of rocks. I had but a glimpse, probably