[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
Red-Eyed Vireo.
{iii}
BIRDS THAT EVERYCHILD 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 OFPHOTOGRAPHS 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 theScandinavian.
{v}
PREFACE
If all his lessons were as joyful as learning to know the birds in thefields 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 anoutburst of song under the window and sets his sleepy brain towondering whether it was a robin's clear, ringing call that startledhim from his dreams, or the chipping sparrow's wiry tremulo, or thegushing little wren's tripping cadenza. Interest in the birds trainsthe ear quite unconsciously. A keen, intelligent listener is rare,even among grown-ups, but a child who is becoming acquainted with thebirds about him hears every sound and puzzles out its meaning with acleverness that amazes those with ears who hear not. He responds tothe first alarm note from the nesting blue birds in the orchard anddashes 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 tobe sure that their persecutor is a hawk. A faint tattoo in the woodssends him climbing up a tall straight tree with the confidentexpectation of finding a woodpecker's nest within the hole in itsside.
While training his ears, Nature is also training every muscle in hisbody, sending him on long tramps across the fields in pursuit of a newbird to be identified, making him run and jump fences and wade brooksand climb trees with the zest that produces an appetite like asaw-mill's and deep sleep at the close of a happy day.
When President Roosevelt was a boy he was far from strong, and hisanxious father and mother naturally encouraged every interest that heshowed in out-of-door pleasures. Among these, perhaps the keenest thathe had was in birds. He knew the haunts of every species within a wideradius of his home and made a large collection of eggs and skins thathe presented to the Smithsonian Museum when he could no longer endurethe evidences of his "youthful indiscretion," as he termed thecollector'