Wild Birds in City Parks

Being hints on identifying 145 birds, prepared primarily for the spring migration in Lincoln Park, Chicago

BY
Herbert Eugene Walter
AND
Alice Hall Walter

REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
WITH CHART AND KEY

Chicago
A. W. Mumford & Company, Publishers
378 Wabash Avenue
1906

Copyright 1901, 1902 and 1904
by Alice Hall Walter

Note to Third Edition.

With the continued success of this little booklet the authors have been led to revise and enlarge the present issue in the hope that it will prove more helpful and complete to those beginning the outdoor study of birds.

The new features of this edition are the addition of forty-five birds—the majority of which are shore and water birds—and a simple field key. The number of each bird as given in the check-list of the American Ornithologist’s Union has also been inserted after its scientific name as an aid in referring to larger bird-books. The subject matter has been carefully rewritten and the order of the birds rearranged in accordance with data covering observations during the last seven years, as well as the charts which show the relative abundance of the birds and the height of the migration in Lincoln Park.

We wish to thank our friends for their kind support in furthering our efforts to enlarge the circle of admirers which the wild birds so richly deserve.

“All nature is so full that that district produces the greatest variety which is most examined.”

—Gilbert White, 1768.

Preface.

The object of this little book is to furnish those who may be interested in making the acquaintance of wild birds with a simple letter of introduction to 145 birds, the majority of which are commonly seen during the spring migration.

Complete descriptions have been avoided, in the belief that the student should rely upon his own observation for the discovery of minor details. The living bird is the one important fact which will make the brief hints offered of value.

Anyone caring to make use of these hints may be assured that during the migrations of the birds city dwellers have one of the keenest delights of country life brought to their very doors, because many birds, migrating largely at night, are attracted by the lights of the city and stop off in their long journey to feed, so that a city park often contains a greater variety of feathered visitors than an equal area in the country.

We wish to remind those of our friends who have asked for pictures in a future edition that this book actually is copiously illustrated by hundreds of living birds every springtime in our parks and around our homes, illustrations that are all life size, absolutely accurate in detail and colored true to nature.

“As for the birds * * * they add immeasurably to the wholesome beauty of life.”

—Theodore Roosevelt, in Bird Lore, Vol. II, p. 98.

General Hints.

“A good observer is quick to take a hint and follow it up.”—John Burroughs.

The identification of birds depends quite as much upon accurate observation of their size, motions, flight, characteristic attitudes, manner of feeding, company, song, call-notes and haunts, as upon details of form and color. Especial care is necessary to insure correct estimates of size for the reason that living birds often appear smaller to the unpracticed eye than they actually are. The familiar English Sparrow is a convenient standard of size because it is usually at hand in our city parks for instant reference. Remembering that it is 6 inches long a practical though rough division of wild birds may be made as follows:—

1. Birds smaller than the English Sparrow.

2. Birds about the size of the English Sparrow.

3. Birds decidedly larger than the English Sparrow.

If a few general characteristics of the principal bird-families be kept in mind, and these are quickly and almost unconsciously learned, the identity of a strange bird may usually be narrowed down to a few possibilities. For example:

Woodpeckers climb up and down the trunks of trees bracing with their tails and tapping the bark vigorously;

Nuthatches are smaller than woodpeckers and have much the same habit of climbing up and down tree-trunks but with a freer wig-wagging motion, often descending head downward;

Flycatchers sit erect with drooping tails, watching alertly for insect prey upon which they pounce in mid-air, afterwards returning to their perch;

Swallows skim through the air in graceful and long sustained flights;

Sparrows have stout seed-cracking bills, feed upon the ground, seldom fly high or far at a time and are for the most part fine songsters;

Warblers are tiny, tireless, gaily-colored explorers of the twigs of trees and bushes;

Kinglets are smaller than warblers and quite as restless in their motions, but arrive earlier in the migration;

Wrens, with tails erect, slip mouse-like about brush heaps, crevices and bushes, though often perching in sight while singing;

Thrushes, who with the exception of the Robin and Bluebird are very plainly dressed, run about on the ground stopping suddenly in a listening attitude. When singing they fly up to some perch, although many of the unrivaled singers of this family are silent