It is not until he calls out his name, Chebec! Chebec! in clear and business-like tones from some tree-top that you could identify this fluffy flycatcher, scarcely more than five inches long, whose dusky coat and light vest offer no helpful markings.
BELTED KINGFISHER - This Izaak Walton of birddom, whom you may see perched as erect as a fish hawk on a snag in the lake, creek or river, or on a dead limb projecting over the water, on the lookout for minnows, chub, red fins, samlets or any other small fry that swims past, is as expert as any fisherman you are ever likely to know.
YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO, Rain Crow - Do you own a cuckoo clock with a little bird inside that flies out of a door every hour and tells you the time? Except when it is time to go to school or to bed you are doubtless amused to hear him hiccough cuckoo, cuckoo, the mechanical notes that tell his name.
FLICKER BIRD, Yellow-hammer bird, Clape, Yucker - Birds for Kids - Why should the flicker discard family traditions and wear clothes so different from those of his relations?
RED-HEADED WOODPECKER - Birds for Kids. A pair of red-headed woodpeckers I know, who made their home in an old tree next to the station yard at Atlanta, where locomotives clanged, puffed, whistled and shrieked all day long, evidently enjoyed the noise, for the male liked nothing better than to add to it by tapping on one of the glass non-conductors around which a telegraph wire ran.
YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER - Birds for Kids - This woodpecker I am sorry to introduce to you as the black sheep of his family, with scarcely a friend to speak a good word for him.
HAIRY WOODPECKER - Birds for Kids - Light woods, with plenty of old trees in them, suit this busy carpenter better than orchards or trees close to our homes, for he is more shy than his sociable little cousin, downy, whom he as closely resembles in feathers as in habits.
DOWNY WOODPECKER - Birds for Kids - A hardy little friend is the downy woodpecker who, like the chickadee, stays by us the year around. Probably no other two birds are so useful in our orchards as these, that keep up a tireless search for the insect robbers of our fruit.
RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD. What child does not know the hummingbird, the jewelled midget that flashes through the garden, poises before a flower as if suspended in the air by magic,
There are some children, and grown-ups, too, who persist in calling this bird the chimney swallow, although it is not even remotely related to the swallow family, and its life history, as well as its anatomy, are quite different from a swallow's, as you shall see.
Did you ever hear a rushing, whirring, booming sound as though wind were blowing across the bung-hole of an empty barrel?
A queer, shadowy bird, that sleeps all day in the dense wood and flies about through open country after dark as softly as an owl, would be difficult for any child to know were it not for the weird, snappy triplets of notes that tell his name. Every one knows him far better by sound than by sight.
TURKEY VULTURE, Turkey Buzzard - Every child south of Mason and Dixon's line knows this big buzzard that sails serenely with its companions in great circles, floating high overhead, now rising, now falling, with scarcely a movement of its wide-spread wings.
When you have been wandering through the summer woods did you ever, like Trowbridge, sit down
PHOEBE BIRD (Dusky Flycatcher). The first of its family to come North, as well as the last to leave us for the winter, the phoebe appears toward the end of March to snap up the first insects warmed into life by the spring sunshine.
CRESTED FLYCATCHER. Far more tyrannical than the kingbird is this "wild Irishman," as John Burroughs calls the large flycatcher with the tousled head and harsh,
KINGBIRD (Bee Martin). In spite of his scientific name, which has branded him the tyrant of tyrants, the kingbird is by no means a bully.
Whiskey Jack Bird (CANADA JAY) . Anyone who has camped in the northern United States and over the Canadian border knows that the crow and blue jay have a rogue for a cousin in this sleek, bold thief, the Canada jay.
BLUE JAY BIRD. This vivacious, dashing fellow, harsh-voiced and noisy, cannot be overlooked; for when a brightly coloured bird, about a foot long, roves about your neighbourhood with a troop of screaming relatives, everybody knows it.
AMERICAN CROW. Two close relatives there are which, like the poor, are always with us—the crow and the blue jay. Both are mischievous rascals, extraordinarily clever, with the most highly developed brains that any of our birds possess.