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If the sparrow has multiplied rapidly, while all the other birds have either only held their own or even have diminished in numbers, it is quite evident he must be better fitted to the conditions than they are. What are his fit points? Why does he succeed while others fail? The thoughtful bird-lover will have little trouble in understanding at least some of his victory-winning characteristics.
Most of all does the bird-lover miss the thrushes from the feathered orchestra.
A friend and fellow bird-lover, driving one evening up this road, startled a bird from the nest, and, checking her horse, looked on in amazement while, one after another, six full-grown shrikes emerged from the tree and flew away. Pondering this strange circumstance she drove on, and when returning looked sharply out for the thorn-tree.
I don't know why I should be so surprised to hear a kingbird sing; for I believe that one of the things we shall discover, when we begin to study birds alive instead of dead, is that every one has a song, at least in spring, when, in the words of an enthusiastic bird-lover, "the smallest become poets, often sublime songsters."
Says another bird-lover, "Let but a bird that being so free and uncontrolled be willing to draw near and conclude a friendship with you, and lo, how your heart is moved!" It is hard to tell in what way this bird impressed every one with a sense of his imperial character, but it is true that he did.
The wiser course, it seems to me, is to learn to be content with what comes to you, and not mourn over what eludes you; to be happy with what nature offers you, nor make yourself miserable over what she for the present withholds; to adopt for your motto the grand words of a fellow bird-lover, "What is mine shall know my face."
The bird-lover who is himself keen of ear is never tired of listening, when in the field, for the two low notes with which the vesper sparrow introduces a song, the rest of which is not at all unlike the one of his song-sparrow cousin.
"When the birds fly past And the chimes ring fast And the long spring shadows sweet shadow cast," comes the most attractive time of year to the bird-lover, the baby-days, when the labors and anxieties of the nest being over, proud and happy parents bring forward their tender younglings all unused to the ways of the world, and carry on their training before our eyes.
He was, in fact, a true bird-lover, strongly condemning cockneys, or rough, ignorant persons who, with no collections of their own, wantonly destroyed kingfishers, or scarce birds of any sort, out of pure stupidity.
But even where patients, through some preconceived notion, or from false ideas of shame or discredit attaching to some particular disease, are trying to mislead you, the very vigor of their efforts will often reveal their secret, just as the piteous broken-winged utterings of the mother partridge reveal instantly to the eye of the bird-lover the presence of the young which she is trying to lure him away from.
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