Category Birds Every Child Should Know

There is a picturesque old inn beside a post road in New Jersey with a five-storied martin house set up on a pole above its quaint swinging sign.

Slim, lithe, elegant, dainty, the catbird, as he runs lightly over the lawn or hunts among the shrubbery, appears to be a fine gentleman among his kind—a sort of Beau Brummel in smooth, gray feathers who has preened and prinked until his toilet is quite faultless.

People who are not very well acquainted with the birds about them usually mistake the long-tailed brown thrasher for a thrush because he has a rusty back and a speckled white breast, which they seem to think is an exclusive thrush characteristic, which it certainly is not.

Hidden among the tall grasses and reeds along the creeks and rivers, lives the long-billed marsh wren, a nervous, active little creature that you know at a glance.

The house wrens have a tiny cousin, a mite of a bird, called the winter wren, that is so shy and retiring you will probably never become well acquainted with it.

If you want some jolly little neighbours for the summer, invite the wrens to live near you year after year by putting up small, one-family box-houses under the eaves of the barn, the cow-shed, or the chicken-house, on the grape arbour or in the orchard.

Count that a red-letter day on your calendar when first you see either this tiny, dainty sprite, or his next of kin, the golden-crowned kinglet, fluttering, twinkling about the evergreens.

When it comes to acrobatic performances in the trees, neither the chickadee nor the titmouse can rival their relatives, the little bluish gray nuthatches.

Don't expect to meet the tufted titmouse if you live very far north of Washington. He is common only in the South and West.

Bitterly cold and dreary though the day may be, that "little scrap of valour," the chickadee, keeps his spirits high until ours cannot but be cheered by the oft-repeated, clear, tinkling silvery notes that spell his name.

Much more shy and reserved than the social, democratic robin is his cousin the wood thrush, whom, perhaps, you more frequently hear than see.

Is there any sign of spring quite so welcome as the glint of the first bluebird unless it is his softly whistled song?

"What's in a name?" Our English cousins over the border are quite sure they hear this sparrow sing the praises of Swee-e-et Can-a-da, Can-a-da, Can-a-da-ah,

When you are looking for the first pussy willows in the frozen marshes, or listening to the peeping of young frogs some day in early spring,

Such a rollicking, jolly singer is the bobolink! On a May morning, when buttercups spangle the fresh grasses in the meadows, he rises from their midst into the air with the merriest frolic of a song you ever heard.

It was on a cold January day in Central Park, New York, that I first met a cardinal and was warmed by the sight.

Among birds, as among humans, it is the father who lends his name to the family, however difficult it may be to know the mother and children by it.

From their hunting-ground in the blackberry tangle and bushes that border a neighbouring wood, a family of chewinks sally forth boldly to my piazza floor to pick up seed from the canary's cage,

Every child knows the bluebird, possibly the kingfisher and the blue jay, too, but there is only one other bird with blue feathers,