Category Birds Every Child Should Know

It would seem as if the people who named most of our birds and wild flowers must have been colour-blind.

AMERICAN GOLDFINCH - Called also: Black-winged Yellow-bird; Thistle Bird; Lettuce Bird; Wild Canary.

When the skies are leaden and the first flurries of snow warn us that winter is near, flocks of juncos, that reflect the leaden skies on their backs,

Do you imagine because he is called the fox sparrow that this bird has four legs, or that he wears a brush instead of feathers for a tail, or that he makes sly visits to the chicken yard after dark?

Called also: Red-breasted Thrush; Migratory Thrush; Robin Redbreast

When the friendly little chippy leaves us in autumn, this similar but larger sparrow cousin comes into the United States from the North,

This summer a pair of the sociable, friendly little chippies—the smallest members of their clan—decided that they would build in a little boxwood tree on the verandah of our house next to the front door through which members of the family passed every hour of the day.

Is there a boy or girl in America who does not already know this saucy, keen-witted little gamin who thrives where other birds would starve;

To name this little dingy sparrow that haunts the open fields and dusty roadsides, you must notice the white feather on each side of his tail as he spreads it and flies before you to alight upon a fence.

While the neighbourly song sparrow and the swamp sparrow delight to be near water,

Where rails thread their way among the rushes, and red-winged blackbirds, marsh wrens, and Maryland yellow-throats like to live, there listen for the tweet-tweet-tweet of the swamp sparrow.

This is most children's favourite bird: is it yours?

Probably this is the most abundant swallow that we have; certainly countless numbers assemble every year in the Long Island and Jersey marshes,

Perhaps you have seen a sand bank somewhere, probably near a river or pond, where the side of the bank was filled with holes as if a small cannon had been trained against it as a target.

More than any other bird family, the swallows are becoming increasingly dependent for shelter upon man, at least when they are nesting;

Do you know where there is an old-fashioned, weather-worn barn, with its hospitable doors standing open, where you could not find at least one pair of barn swallows at home beneath its roof?