There is something infectious in the enthusiasm of a student of birds. To hear him talk about the excitement of seeing a new bird, to read his account of it, or, best of all, to go afield with him on a May morning, is often enough to awaken a new interest, which enriches life to a surprising degree. The study of birds presents plenty of difficulties, which add fuel to the flame of real enthusiasm; there are sloughs of despond beyond which the faint-hearted never get. A guide who knows the way, its pitfalls and short cuts, is always welcome, and almost necessary in these days when our only weapon is the opera-glass. In spite of the fact that many excellent books are now available, the author offers another, both in the belief that there can never be too many good guides, and in the hope that this book has been especially adapted to the growing class of beginners in bird study.
The book is the result of experience with many field classes. Every effort has been made to emphasize the aspect of birds as seen out of doors, to describe their general or most prominent colors rather than any mark difficult to see on the living bird, and to call attention to their characteristic habits and haunts, and thus to enable the conscientious student to answer, with as much certainty as possible, the question, ”What is the bird that I have seen?” The keys and the illustrations have been prepared with this end in view. There has been no attempt to give a complete description of the plumage, as it would look if the bird were held in the hand, nor does the book contain anything like full biographies of each species. Minute descriptions of the plumage and full accounts of the lives of the birds are to be found in many excellent books, some one of which may well be used to supplement this Guide.
Notes and songs have been carefully described, and as far as possible expressed in English syllables. The author is well aware that another listener might express the same sounds by very different syllables; he has not attempted to convey to any one unfamiliar with the song anything more than an idea of its length and accent, and perhaps a suggestion of the quality of its tone. It is hoped, however, that the songs as transcribed will be useful in identifying doubtful species, that any one comparing the transcripts in the book with his own field-notes, or, better still, with the songs themselves, will recognize their likeness to that of one species and their unlikeness to that of another.
The descriptions given in this Guide of the nests and eggs of those birds that breed in New York and New England are not intended to be full or detailed. If a nest and eggs have been found, but no clue to the parent birds has been obtained, these descriptions will not serve as a means of identification; in fact, even a large collection of nests and eggs is sometimes of little use in such a case. The descriptions are merely intended to guide the student in his search for a nest by indicating where it is generally placed, or if the student thinks he has discovered the nest and eggs of a certain species, they will tend to confirm or to dispel his belief.
The book attempts to be a guide for only a restricted region, --eastern New York, northern New Jersey, and New England. By this narrowing of the field, many species are eliminated which in other manuals bewilder a beginner and often lead him into error. No mention, moreover, is made of birds that are only irregular wanderers to the region.
As the student advances in the study of birds and be. comes more familiar with the commoner species and more interested in the subject, he often asks, “ Where or how can I see such and such a species, of which I read in Burroughs or Torrey ?” In the case of local or rare birds, an attempt has been made in this Guide to direct the student to certain favorable localities where the species will be either surely or probably found; and in every case the kind of country where a species is likely to occur is as fully described as possible.
Though by far the greater number of our birds spend the winter months south of us, yet a few species of land birds and many sea-birds find food enough here even in winter to support life. If these species are also found in the same region in summer, they are known as permanent residents. Examples of this class are the Chickadee, the Crow, the owls, and the Grouse or Partridge. Several of them are birds that find their food on the limbs or twigs of trees, in the form of dormant insects or their eggs, others feed on the seeds of weeds or grasses, or on the berries or buds of bushes or trees. The owls live on mice or other small mammals. Most of the birds that live chiefly on insects are driven south by the approach of frost.
Besides these resident birds, our winter list includes birds that are found in summer to the north ward of us, migrants, in other words, for whom our latitude is far enough south to afford food. Examples of this class are the Shrike, the Golden-crowned Kinglet, and the Tree Sparrow; they are known as winter visitants. Another group of birds, including the Crossbills and the Pine Grosbeaks, generally resident in high latitudes, move southward at very irregular intervals, and then become abundant winter visitants.
The first warm days of March melt the snow from the hillsides of central New England and stir the hibernating insects; a few species of birds that have wintered only a few degrees to the south of us, now begin to move northward and arrive in New England; examples are the Bronzed Grackle and the Red-winged Blackbird. A few Bluebirds and a fairly large number of Song Sparrows winter in southern Connecticut and in the lower Hudson Valley, but in March the number becomes vastly larger, as the army from the south arrives. Most of the winter birds are still here, so that the March list is the winter list plus the March arrivals. In April, a larger number of species arrive from still farther south, but a few of the winter residents now leave for their summer homes, so that they must be subtracted from the April list. May brings back all the birds that have wintered south of us, as far south in many cases as Central or South America. It also drives northward our winter visitants, so that these no longer appear on the list. Some of these, such as the Tree Sparrow, breed outside the limits of the United States, so that they need not enter into our calculations again till they return in the fall; many others, such as the Brown Creeper and the Golden-crowned Kinglet, though they now vanish from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the lower Hudson Valley, go no farther than the Adirondacks, New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine to breed; these therefore appear later in the list of the summer birds of those regions. Some of the March migrants, too, such as the Fox Sparrow, pass farther north in April beyond the Canadian boundary and do not appear again in our lists till the fall. Others, both of the March and April arrivals, pass into northern New England and New York to breed, but are eliminated from our May list in the southern and central portions of our field.
By the middle of June, all birds are on their breeding grounds; lists of birds seen in the latter half of June and early July include only the permanent residents and the summer residents. But inasmuch as the summer birds of northern New York and New England differ so much from those of the rest of the field, as is more fully explained under the heading Distribution, the division of the key which is especially intended for northern New York and New England is larger for summer than for other seasons.
Many of our summer residents grow less numerous or disappear entirely before the first of September; very few migrants from the north are seen till the middle of the month, when the arrival of the Black-poll Warblers marks the beginning of the return tide. By the middle of October only a few of our summer residents and a few migrants remain, and by the first of December we come back to winter fare. The list for the autumn months will include, therefore, all our permanent residents, all our summer residents, except those that leave before the middle of September, and all the migrants.
The migration of birds is their movement away from their breeding grounds at the close of one breeding season, and their return to it at the approach of the next. Almost all birds move about to a certain extent after they are no longer bound to the neighborhood of the nest, but when an Owl haunts the same swampy forest throughout the year and Downy Woodpecker wanders no farther from its woodland home than the nearest village, we call such birds non-migratory. The great majority of our birds, however, are forced by lack of food to move southward at the end of summer; some go only a short way, many pass beyond the limits of the United States, a few pass the Equator. It often happens that there are individuals of a species present both in summer and in winter; there are Chickadees, for instance, in New England at all seasons, though it is quite possible that they are not the same individuals that the more southern have been replaced by some that bred farther north. For our purpose, however, such birds must be considered permanent residents. Some species, Crows for instance, are permanent residents, but are much commoner in summer than in winter.
The wandering away from the breeding ground begins almost as soon as the young are able to fly ; Snowbirds often appear in the valleys, a mile or so from spruce growth, as early as the middle of July. During August, many of our resident birds undoubtedly move southward ; many have been silent for some time, so that we do not notice their departure. A few species, too, reach us from the north during July and August, the Solitary Sandpiper and the Great Blue Heron toward the end of July, the Northern Water-thrush and the Yellow-rumped Warbler in August. By the tenth of September, the great stream of northern birds sets in, reaching its height about the first of October, though the Fox and Tree Sparrows do not arrive till late in October. It is safe to say that by the fifteenth of December all the land-birds that intend to move southward have done so. In New England and New York, there is practically no change in bird-life (unless it be a further diminution in number of some wintering species) until the middle of February.
The first arrivals from the south, the Crow Blackbirds, Bluebirds, etc., reach the lower Hudson Valley by the end of February, and the latitude of Boston early in March. These are birds that have wintered within fairly easy reach, in the Carolinas perhaps, or in Virginia. Stormy weather delays them ; a warm spell with southwest winds brings them early. All through March and early April other birds which have wintered in the Southern States arrive. In the mean time, birds that have wintered in the tropics have been pushing into the Gulf States or into Florida, and at each warm wave they advance, till in May they flood New York and New England in a great wave. The first warm, fair night following a hot day, or, better still, two successive hot days, between the third and tenth of May, will generally bring the first Orioles ; the next such spell of heat will bring all the northern warblers and thrushes. If early May is cool and clear for days, the birds do not arrive in a great body, but slip through in little flocks, almost unnoticed. A cold northeast storm following suddenly on a hot wave makes the best conditions for observing migrants; they are held back in great numbers, and as they feed low in the bushes in such weather, they can be easily studied. About the city of New York, migration is practically over by Decoration Day ; a day or two later, the last Black-poll Warbler and Olive-backed Thrush have left the latitude of Boston. Only two or three rare migrants, the Mourning Warbler, for instance, occur regularly in June.
The above paragraphs deal chiefly with the migration of land-birds; the shore-birds and the sea-birds have somewhat different periods of migration. The sandpipers, plovers, and terns spend the winter to the southward, and return to their breeding grounds for the most part during May. A few species remain to breed off the coasts of New York and New England, but the vast majority pass farther north.
By the middle of July, many of the sandpipers begin to come back, and there is a heavy migration of the shore-birds during August and early September. Numbers of the ducks, loons, grebes, and gulls are winter visitants to our coasts; they begin to pass north in April, and by the end of May all that are going north have left. The gulls begin to come back in August, some of the sea-ducks, loons, and grebes in September, and throughout October there is a steady southward movement; by the first of December the bulk of those that winter farther south have already passed by.
There are several facts about the migration of birds that it is well for the observer to keep in mind. In many species the males precede the females by several days, — in the case of the Red-winged Blackbird by several weeks. If a species is a summer resident of any locality, and also a migrant to more northern regions, the first arrivals are almost always residents which return to the old breeding-places. The earliest Black-throated Green Warbler, therefore, will be found in some grove of pines where the bird breeds, and two weeks later, perhaps, the orchards and open woodland will be full of migrant Black-throated Green Warblers, passing north in company with other northern warblers. The resident birds, moreover, vary greatly in promptness; some one Catbird will be noted as an early bird, singing in his favorite thicket several days before his neighbors arrive. The period of migration of any one species varies, largely according to the abundance of the species, but also according to some unexplained idiosyncrasy of the bird. The Yellow-rumped Warbler is passing through sometimes for a period of over a month; the first Rusty Blackbird often appears late in March, and the last in early May. Certain birds are seen much less frequently in migration than one would expect from their abundance northward; the Winter Wren and the Sapsucker are examples. Some birds have very different routes in spring and fall; the Connecticut. Warbler is almost never found in New England in spring, but is sometimes locally common in the autumn, while the Blackburnian Warbler is much rarer in the autumn than in the spring. Several birds, therefore, the Yellow-bellied Flycatcher and the Bay-breasted Warbler, for instance, occur as not uncommon migrants along the Hudson, or even in the Connecticut Valley, though rare in eastern New England.
The spring is an easier time to identify migrants than the autumn. Nearly all the males are in full song in the spring; very few sing at all in the autumn. Many birds change their plumage in the summer, and lose their bright distinctive marks. And yet, to an enthusiast, there is something very fascinating in the study of the fall migrants. In spring, the bird's song generally betrays his presence for some time before he is seen ; but in the autumn one is kept constantly on the alert to discover in the flocks of small restless warblers or sparrows, often dull colored and puzzling, some novelty or rarity.
Perhaps the most interesting experience connected with the study of birds is to hear the notes of migrants passing overhead on clear nights in August and September. The tsip of Black-poll Warblers or the chink of a Bobolink falling from the darkness, brings home to one with startling impressiveness the wonder of the long journey from northern New England to the Equator and back again.
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