r to
exclude the thousand and one human attributes with which we are prone to
colour the bird's mental environment.

John Burroughs has rendered the song of the black-throated green warbler
in an inimitable way, as follows: "---- ----V----!" When we have once
heard the bird we will instantly recognise the aptness of these symbolic
lines. The least flycatcher, called _minimus_ by the scientists, well
deserves his name, for of all those members of his family which make their
home with us, he is the smallest. These miniature flycatchers have a way
of hunting which is all their own. They sit perched on some exposed twig
or branch, motionless until some small insect flies in sight. Then they
will launch out into the air, and, catching the insect with a snap of
their beaks, fly back to the same perch. They are garbed in subdued grays,
olives, and yellows. The least flycatcher has another name which at once
distinguishes him--chebec'. As he sits on a limb, his whole body trembles
when he jerks out these syllables, and his tail snaps as if it played some
important part in the mechanism of his vocal effort.

When you are picking cowslips and hepaticas early in the month, keep a
lookout for the first barn swallow. Nothing gives us such an impression of
the independence and individuality of birds as when a solitary member of
some species arrives days before others of his kind. One fork-tailed
beauty of last year's nest above the haymow may hawk about for insects day
after day alone, before he is joined by other swallows. Did he spend the
winter by himself, or did the _heimweh_ smite his heart more sorely and
bring him irresistibly to the loved nest in the rafters? This love of
home, which is so striking an attribute of birds, is a wonderfully
beautiful thing. It brings the oriole back to the branch where still
swings her exquisite purse-shaped home of last summer; it leads each pair
of fishhawks to their particular cartload of sticks, to which a few more
must be added each year; it hastens the wing beats of the sea-swallows
northward to the beach which, ten months ago, was flecked with their
eggs--the shifting grains of sand their only nest.

This love of home, of birthplace, bridges over a thousand physical
differences between these feathered creatures and ourselves. We forget
their expressionless masks of horn, their feathered fingers, their scaly
toes, and looking deep into their clear, bright eyes, we know and feel a
kinship