THE AMERICAN ROBIN Called also: Red-breasted Thrush; Migratory Thrush; Robin Redbreast

THE BLUEBIRD

THE WOOD THRUSH Called also: Song Thrush; Wood Robin; Bell Bird

WILSON'S THRUSH

THE CHICKADEE Called also: Black-capped Titmouse

TUFTED TITMOUSE Called also: Peto Bird; Crested Tomtit; Crested Titmouse

WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH Called also: Tree Mouse; Devil Downhead.

RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET

THE HOUSE WREN

THE CAROLINA WREN

THE MARSH WREN

THE BROWN THRASHER Called also: Brown Thrush; Long Thrush;

THE CATBIRD

THE MOCKINGBIRD

YELLOW WARBLER Called also: Summer Yellowbird; Wild Canary.

BLACK AND WHITE CREEPING WARBLER

OVEN-BIRD Called also: The Teacher; Golden-crowned Thrush; The Accentor.

MARYLAND YELLOW-THROAT Called also: Black-masked Ground Warbler

THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT

THE REDSTART

THE VIREOS

THE RED-EYED VIREO

THE WHITE-EYED VIREO

THE YELLOW-THROATED VIREO

THE WARBLING VIREO

THE BUTCHER-BIRDS OR SHRIKES

THE CEDAR WAXWING Called also: Cedarbird; Cherry-bird; Bonnet bird, Silk-tail.

THE SCARLET TANAGER Called also: Black-winged Redbird

THE SWALLOWS

THE PURPLE MARTIN

THE BARN SWALLOW

THE EAVE OR CLIFF SWALLOW

THE BANK SWALLOW Called also: Sand Martin; Sand Swallow

THE TREE SWALLOW Called also: White-breasted Swallow

THE SPARROW TRIBE

THE SONG SPARROW

SWAMP SPARROW

FIELD SPARROW

VESPER SPARROW

ENGLISH SPARROW

CHIPPING SPARROW Called also: Chippy; Door-step Sparrow; Hair Sparrow.

TREE SPARROW Called also: Winter Chippy

WHITE-THROATED SPARROW Called also: Peabody-bird; Canada Sparrow

FOX SPARROW

JUNCO Called also: Slate-coloured Snow-bird

SNOWFLAKE

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

PURPLE FINCH Called also: Linnet

INDIGO BUNTING Called also: Indigo-bird.

TOWHEE Called also: Chewink; Ground Robin; Joree

RED-BREASTED GROSBEAK

CARDINAL GROSBEAK Called also: Crested Redbird: Virginia Nightingale.

BOBOLINK Called also: Reedbird; Ricebird; Ortolan; Maybird

COWBIRD

RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD Called also: Swamp Blackbird

RUSTY BLACKBIRD Called also: Thrush Blackbird

MEADOWLARK Called also: Old-field Lark; Meadow Starling

ORCHARD ORIOLE

BALTIMORE ORIOLE Called also: Firebird; Golden Robin; Hang-nest; Golden Oriole

THE PURPLE AND THE BRONZED GRACKLES Called also: Crow Blackbirds

AMERICAN CROW

BLUE JAY

CANADA JAY Called also: Whiskey Jack; Moose-bird; Meat-bird

THE FLYCATCHERS

KINGBIRD Called also: Bee Martin

CRESTED FLYCATCHER

PHOEBE Called also: Bridge Pewee; Dusky Flycatcher; Water Pewee

WOOD PEWEE

LEAST FLYCATCHER Called also: Chebec

WHIP-POOR-WILL

NIGHTHAWK Called also: Bull-bat; Night-jar; Mosquito-hawk

CHIMNEY SWIFT

RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD

OUR FIVE COMMON WOODPECKERS

DOWNY WOODPECKER

HAIRY WOODPECKER

YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER

RED-HEADED WOODPECKER

FLICKER Called also: High-hole; Clape; Golden-winged Woodpecker; Yellow-hammer; Yucker.

YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO Called also: Rain Crow

BELTED KINGFISHER Called also: The Halcyon

TURKEY VULTURE Called also: Turkey Buzzard

RED-SHOULDERED HAWK Called also: Hen Hawk; Chicken Hawk; Winter Hawk

RED-TAILED HAWK Called also: Hen Hawk; Chicken Hawk; Red Hawk

COOPER'S HAWK Called also: Chicken Hawk; Big Blue Darter

BALD EAGLE

AMERICAN SPARROW HAWK Called also: Killy Hawk; Rusty-crowned Falcon; Mouse Hawk.

AMERICAN OSPREY Called also: Fish Hawk

OWLS

BARN OWL Called also: Monkey-faced Owl

SHORT-EARED OWL Called also: Marsh Owl; Meadow Owl

BARRED OWL Called also: Hoot Owl

SCREECH OWLS

MOURNING DOVE Called also: Carolina Dove

BOB-WHITE Called Also: "Quail-on-Toast"; Partridge

RUFFED GROUSE Called also: Partridge

KILLDEER

SEMIPALMATED PLOVER

LEAST SANDPIPER

SPOTTED SANDPIPER

WOODCOCK Called also: Blind, Wall-eyed, Mud, Bigheaded, Wood,

RAILS

GREAT BLUE HERON

LITTLE GREEN HERON Called also: Poke; Chuckle-head

BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON Called also: Quawk; Qua Bird

AMERICAN BITTERN Called also: Stake-driver; Poke; Freckled Heron; Booming Bittern; Indian Hen.

CANADA GOOSE

WILD DUCKS

HERRING GULL Called also: Winter Gull

[Transcriber's notes]

This is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/birdsthateverych00doub

Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book.

Obvious spelling errors have been corrected but "inventive" and inconsistent spelling is left unchanged.

Thanks to Kathy Danek for introducing me to this book.

[End Transcriber's notes]

{cover}

BIRDS
Every Child Should Know

by Neltje Blanchan

{i}

BIRDS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW

{ii}

Red-Eyed Vireo.

{iii}

BIRDS THAT EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW

BY

NELTJE BLANCHAN

Author of

"Bird Neighbours,"
"Birds that Hunt and Are Hunted,"
"Nature's Garden," and
"How to Attract the Birds."

SIXTY-THREE PAGES OF PHOTOGRAPHS FROM LIFE

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

{iv}

Copyright, 1907, by
Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.

{v}

PREFACE

If all his lessons were as joyful as learning to know the birds in the fields and woods, there would be no

"...whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell And shining morning face creeping like Snaile Unwillingly to schoole."

Long before his nine o'clock headache appears, lessons have begun. Nature herself is the teacher who rouses him from his bed with an outburst of song under the window and sets his sleepy brain to wondering whether it was a robin's clear, ringing call that startled him from his dreams, or the chipping sparrow's wiry tremulo, or the gushing little wren's tripping cadenza. Interest in the birds trains the ear quite unconsciously. A keen, intelligent listener is rare, even among grown-ups, but a child who is becoming acquainted with the birds about him hears every sound and puzzles out its meaning with a cleverness that amazes those with ears who hear not. He responds to the first alarm note from the nesting blue birds in the orchard and dashes out of the house to chase away a prowling cat. He knows from {vi} afar the distress caws of a company of crows and away he goes to be sure that their persecutor is a hawk. A faint tattoo in the woods sends him climbing up a tall straight tree with the confident expectation of finding a woodpecker's nest within the hole in its side.

While training his ears, Nature is also training every muscle in his body, sending him on long tramps across the fields in pursuit of a new bird to be identified, making him run and jump fences and wade brooks and climb trees with the zest that produces an appetite like a saw-mill's and deep sleep at the close of a happy day.

When President Roosevelt was a boy he was far from strong, and his anxious father and mother naturally encouraged every interest that he showed in out-of-door pleasures. Among these, perhaps the keenest that he had was in birds. He knew the haunts of every species within a wide radius of his home and made a large collection of eggs and skins that he presented to the Smithsonian Museum when he could no longer endure the evidences of his "youthful indiscretion," as he termed the collector's mania. But those bird hunts that had kept him happily employed in the open air all day long, helped to make him the strong, manly man he is, whose wonderful physical endurance is not the least factor of his greatness. No one abhors the killing of birds and the {vii} robbing of nests more than he; few men, not specialists, know so much about bird life.

Nature, the best teacher of us all, trains the child's eyes through study of the birds to quickness and precision, which are the first requisites for all intelligent observation in every field of knowledge. I know boys who can name a flock of ducks when they are mere specks twinkling in their rapid rush across the autumn sky; and girls who instantly recognise a goldfinch by its waving flight above the garden. The white band across the end of the kingbird's tail leads to his identification the minute some sharp young eyes perceive it. At a considerable distance, a little girl I know distinguished a white-eyed from a red-eyed vireo, not by the colour of the iris of either bird's eye, but by the yellowish white bars on the white-eyed vireo's wings which she had noticed at a glance. Another girl named the yellow-billed cuckoo, almost hidden among the shrubbery, by the white thumb-nail spots on the quills of his outspread tail where it protruded for a second from a mass of leaves. A little urchin from the New York City slums was the first to point out to his teacher, who had lived twenty years on a farm, the faint reddish streaks on the breast of a yellow warbler in Central Park. Many there are who have eyes and see not.

What does the study of birds do for the {viii} imagination, that high power possessed by humans alone, that lifts them upward step by step into new realms of discovery and joy? If the thought of a tiny hummingbird, a mere atom in the universe, migrating from New England to Central America will not stimulate a child's imagination, then all the tales of fairies and giants and beautiful princesses and wicked witches will not cause his sluggish fancy to roam. Poetry and music, too, would fail to stir it out of the deadly commonplace.

Interest in bird life exercises the sympathies. The child reflects something of the joy of the oriole whose ecstasy of song from the elm on the lawn tells the whereabouts of a dangling "cup of felt" with its deeply hidden treasures. He takes to heart the tragedy of a robin's mud-plastered nest in the apple tree that was washed apart by a storm, and experiences something akin to remorse when he takes a mother bird from the jaws of his pet cat. He listens for the return of the bluebirds to the starch-box home he made for them on top of the grape arbour and is strangely excited and happy that bleak day in March when they re-appear. It is nature sympathy, the growth of the heart, not nature study, the training of the brain, that does most for us.

Neltje Blanchan.
Mill Neck, 1906.

{ix}

CONTENTS

{xi}

[Transcriber's note: Scroll down for even pages and scroll up for odd pages.]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

{3}

CHAPTER I

OUR ROBIN GOODFELLOW AND HIS RELATIONS:

American Robin
Bluebird
Wood Thrush
Wilson's Thrush

{4}

{5}