File:Birds and nature (1904) (14565056880).jpg

Identifier: birdsnature161904chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds Natural history
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
red, she exhibits somuch distress that one sympathetic tobird griefs has no heart to pursue inves-tigations. It seems strange that there should beso much antipathy to these plain sweet-voiced but erratic birds. Though theircat-calls may seem harsh, and during theseason of ripening they may partake quitelargely of our smaller cultivated fruits,we should remember that while they par-take of some fruit they are also eatingmany insects which also forms their chiefdiet during the remainder of the year. THE CATBIRD. Not always arias are best From birds in gayest plumage drest —Henry Nason Kinney. The songs that are harbored in theCatbirds leaden breast, are as apples ofgold in pictures of heavily oxydized sil-ver, and liis zeal in scattering the fruits ofthe harvest garnered in many a vocal field leads to the supposition that the darkgrey, tailor-made lady of his choice maysoliloquize upon the lines, Comfort mewith apples, for I am sick of love.If the skylark is nearest to heaven, the 182
Text Appearing After Image:
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES. 50 CATBIRD.(Galeoscoptes carolinensi?; Life-size. COPYRIGHT 1900, BY MUMFORD, CHICAGO. Catbird is, conversely, nearest to man,building his home in the low busheswithin easy range of his inspection andsupervision; accomplishing his springflitting,—when such a cataclasm is ren-dered necessary through human or felineinterference—in fond imitation, somebelieve, of a familiar human spectacle, bycarrying the half-dressed progeny pick-a-back ; singing to man and posing to himas none other does; and if sometimes hisaudience gapes for wonderment, as didthe one Samuel Coleridge observed, When the long-breathed singers uptrilled strainBursts in a squall,— it is because he shares the human beliefin the virtue of occasional discord toenhance the value and effect of harmo-nious passages. If not entirely an original composer,he gives so elegant and studied a turn tohis variations upon the themes of othermasters, as to establish himself as theavian exemplification

Note About Images