Mabel Osgood Wright

“ Do you want to know the birds and call them by their familiar names? You may do so if you will, provided you have keen eyes and a pocket full of patience; patience is the salt of the bird-catching legend. ”

“ If you wish to go on this pleasant quest, you must take with you three things,—a keen eye, a quick ear, and loving patience. The vision may be supplemented by a good field-glass, and the ear quickened by training, but there is no substitute for intelligent patience. A mere dogged persistency will not do for the study of the living bird, and it is to the living bird in his love-songs, his house-building, his haunts, and his migrations, that I would lead you. The gun that silences the bird voice, and the looting of nests, should be left to the practised hand of science ”

“ The museums also are open to you, and their treasury of skilfully preserved birds offers the advantage of close inspection. The taxidermist’s art has reached great perfection lately, and in the place of bird mummies, stuffed and mounted each in the stiff attitude of its neighbour, without the tribal marks of pose or expression,—as much alike as the four-and-twenty blackbirds that were baked in the pie,—we now see the birds as individuals in their homes. ”