John Burroughs - Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and other papers: Birds

Welcome to Natural History Stories - a podcast of classic writings on natural history and nature observation. Our first four episodes take us through the John Burroughs collection, "Bird and Bees, Sharp Eyes and other papers." Published in 1887, the works were written between 1875 and 1886. This episode contains the Birds section of this collection. There are two chapters, Bird Enemies and The Tragedies of the Nests. Given the age of the writings, these stories contain outdated thoughts and ideas including the reckless killing of wildlife, human interference in nature systems and racist tropes about Native Americans, These are the thoughts and ideas of the writer and are presented only as such. We respect the Wabanaki People as the original stewards of the land where we stand today. In this episode, there are also outdated or regional common names used for birds. Here are the names used along with their modern accepted common names. High Hole = Northern Flicker Cheewink = Eastern Towhee Social Sparrow = Chipping Sparrow Cedar Bird = Cedar Waxwing Snowbird = Dark-eyed Junco English Sparrow = House Sparrow Hair Bird - Chipping Sparrow Blue-back = Black-throated Blue Warbler Blue Yellow-back = Northern Parula