Bird – Snowflake
Bird Identification – Snowflake In the northern United States and Canada, it is the snowflake or snow bunting, a sparrowy little bird with a great deal of white among its rusty brown feathers that is the familiar winter visitor. Instead of hopping, like most of its tribe, it walks over the frozen fields and rarely […]
Bird – Turkey Vulture – Turkey Buzzard
Bird Identification – Turkey Vulture – Turkey Buzzard Every child south of Mason and Dixon’s line knows this big buzzard that sails serenely with its companions in great circles, floating high overhead, now rising, now falling, with scarcely a movement of its wide-spread wings. In the air, it expresses the very poetry of motion. No […]
Bird – Orchard Oriole
Bird Identification – Orchard Oriole Fortunately many other birds besides this oriole prefer to live in orchards; otherwise think how many worm-eaten apples there would be! He usually has the kingbird for company, and, strange to say, keeps on friendly terms with that rather exclusive fellow; also the robin, the bluebird, the cedar waxwing and […]
Bird – The House Wren
Bird Identification – The House Wren If you want some jolly little neighbours for the summer, invite the wrens to live near you year after year by putting up small, one-family box-houses under the eaves of the barn, the cow-shed, or the chicken-house, on the grape arbour or in the orchard. Beware of a pair […]
Bird – Hairy Woodpecker
Bird Identification – Hairy Woodpecker Light woods, with plenty of old trees in them, suit this busy carpenter better than orchards or trees close to our homes, for he is more shy than his sociable little cousin, downy, whom he as closely resembles in feathers as in habits. He is three inches longer, however, yet […]
Bird – Phoebe – Bridge Pewee – Dusky Flycatcher – Water Pewee
Bird Identification – Phoebe – Bridge Pewee – Dusky Flycatcher – Water Pewee The first of its family to come North, as well as the last to leave us for the winter, the phoebe appears toward the end of March to snap up the first insects warmed into life by the spring sunshine. Grackles in […]
Bird – Yellow-billed Cuckoo – Rain Crow
Bird Identification – Yellow-billed Cuckoo – Rain Crow Do you own a cuckoo clock with a little bird inside that flies out of a door every hour and tells you the time? Except when it is time to go to school or to bed you are doubtless amused to hear him hiccough cuckoo, cuckoo, the […]
Bird – The White-eyed Vireo
Bird Identification – The White-eyed Vireo It is not often that you can get close enough to any bird to see the white of his eyes, but the brighter olive green of this vivacious little white-eyed vireo’s upper parts, his white breast, faintly washed with yellow on the sides, and the two yellowish white bars […]
Bird – The Barn Swallow
Bird Identification – The Barn Swallow 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? These birds, you will notice, prefer dilapidated old farm buildings, whose doors are off their hinges, […]
Bird – The Mockingbird
Bird Identification – The Mockingbird What child is there who does not know the mockingbird, caged or free? In the North you very rarely see one now-a-days behind prison bars, for, happily, several enlightened states have made laws to punish people who keep our wild birds in cages or offer them for sale, dead or […]