By-Products of Bird-Study

THE interest in birds brings its own exceeding great reward, but there are a few phases of the question which have received too little attention, and the chief of these is the attitude of other people toward one’s hobby. I am always filled with astonishment at the cheapness of a reputation for knowledge. Before I had mastered the rudiments of the subject, the papers would call me up and say, ‘I hear you are an authority on birds, will you please give us a column on the subject,’ — gratis, of course. I being too busy at the moment to comply with this modest request, the reporter next day drops in and wastes an hour of my valuable time in getting perfectly good ‘copy’ on ‘The Birds to be seen at this Time of Year in the Parks,’ for which he receives pay. In some mysterious way my fame seems to grow, and in the spring I can scarcely go out without encountering some one who greets me with, ‘I saw such a cunning little bird to-day which reminded me of you,’ — this to a dignified, stout woman, belonging to one of the learned professions!

If you are unfortunate enough to board, your fellow boarders will become slightly infected, and will ask you to identify a bird ‘ dark-colored and twice as tall as an English sparrow,’ or a bird ‘with a sort of accordion pleating on its back.’ The most astonishing request was that of a pleasant gentleman who unexpectedly asked me ‘to go like a wren,’ but whether physically or vocally I never discovered. This thirst for identification is one of the joys of the bird ‘expert.’ Some one has seen ‘a bird larger than a robin, with a light blue stripe about two inches wide around its neck.’ I will pass this on to some of my more experienced fellow ornithologists for an opinion.

When an interest in birds begins in a house there is no stopping it. Last spring our cook was seen half out of the kitchen window, and when asked what she was doing replied, ' Did you notice that little black-and-yellow bird?' The gestures accompanying the descriptions of birds are an added pleasure, as people always illustrate their meaning. ‘It had a gray breast,’ they will say with a pass in the air in the region of their stomachs; and a young man, a friend of mine, nearly dislocated his shoulder trying to show me that a bird had stripes on its back, when all the time I knew perfectly well where its back was.

I had no idea of the range of bird songs until I had them whistled or sung or hummed to me, with the expectation that I should instantly recognize them. Sometimes I wonder if the birds themselves would be willing to own them. Now, to tell the truth, I have not yet progressed so far in this interesting study, as to be absolutely sure of any but the commoner birds by their songs; but experience has convinced me that the lovely plaintive song of the white-throated sparrow is the only one which can be reproduced by the amateur in a manner readily to be recognized. When I have mastered this branch of the subject I shall expect to be easily able to identify the Parsifal music, when played by a beginner, on a Jew’s-harp.

An added pleasure is the education of the public. It is now possible to stop at a farmhouse for a drink of water and have the farmer’s wife give a glance at one’s opera-glasses and ask, ‘What kinds of birds have you seen?’ Yet, once we were viewed with suspicion, if we stood half an hour in the same spot gazing fixedly at nothing.

The friendly relations established during birding tramps form another asset. I have never yet found a boy, who had not some interesting information to impart in return for a look through operaglasses, which pride would not let him admit were not adjusted for his eyes. Even the most popular clergyman in my city may become in common parlance ‘one of the boys,’ when he is pursuing with me a Savannah sparrow through a particularly wet marsh; I have never had time to go to hear him preach, but I am confident that he would do it well, since he is such a friendly companion and good ‘birder.’ Any person with a pair of opera-glasses in hand needs no other introduction, but is at once a comrade and a competitor, anxious to impart information and usually willing to receive the same; but it is astonishing how small a person ordinarily generous may become, when confronted with the other man’s list of rare species. I have even known people to sink so low as to say, ‘I do not believe it!’

The deep snow in April last year started me out, with bird-seed and suet, to succor the migrants in the park, only to find that the burly policeman had been before me, with bread and cracker crumbs on a nicely-brushed path in a sunny place. He greeted me thus: ‘I found a dead robin yesterday, and I could not stand it to think of all the birds starving to death, so I went to the nearest house and got some bread for them, and when I came from dinner to-day, I brought some more things along, and see what a lot of them there are eating!’ Was it not worth wet skirts to hear that? The humane policeman and I have been stanch friends ever since, and he has given me much useful information, even to the extent of telling me that he saw an eagle in the Park; and I believe it, even if in this case I must think it was a ‘garden escape.’

Then there is a gentle glow of superiority at being able to see and hear things, which are unknown to the multitude. One day I saw a bobolink singing his heart out on a telegraph wire, and watched twenty people go by him, not one of whom raised an eyelash! What could they have been thinking of, one half so lovely? Nothing but the bird-craze has ever been able to get me to the country at sunrise in the spring. For years I never realized that Nature is at her best when the dew is sparkling on the grass, and the multitudes of the feathered host are singing their anthem of love and thanksgiving. It is impossible at five o’clock of a fine May morning not to give thanks for the seeing eye and the hearing ear which have been unconsciously acquired during the time spent in birdstudy.