Title: The Curious Book of Birds
Author: Abbie Farwell Brown
Illustrator: E. Boyd Smith
Release Date: June 27, 2005 [EBook #16140]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CURIOUS BOOK OF BIRDS ***

As the stories are added to this blog, 
a link will be added for the stories. 
They are good stories, but not all the facts are right. 
Just enjoy them anyway. (Lee)

The Curious Book of Birds

By Abbie Farwell Brown

With Illustrations
By E. Boyd Smith

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1903

Published October, 1903.

There are many books written nowadays which will tell you about birds as folk of the twentieth century see them. They describe carefully the singer’s house, his habits, the number of his little wife’s eggs, and the color of every tiny feather on her pretty wings. But these books tell you nothing at all about bird-history; about what birds have meant to all the generations of men, women, and children since the world began. You would think, to read the words of the bird-book men, that they were the very first folk to see any bird, and that what they think they have seen is the only matter worth the knowing.

Now the interesting facts about birds we have always with us. We can find them out for ourselves, which is a very pleasant thing to do, or we can take the word of others, of which there is no lack. But it is the quaint fancies about birds which are in danger of being lost. The long-time fancies which the world’s children in all lands have been taught are quite as important as the every-day facts. They show what the little feathered brothers have been to the children of men; how we have come to like some and to dislike others as we do; why the poets have called them by certain nicknames which we ought to know; and why a great many strange things are so, in the minds of childlike people.

Facts are not what one looks for in a Curious Book. Yet it may be that some facts have crept in among the ancient fancies of this volume, just as bookworms will crawl into the nicest books; but they do not belong there, and it is for these that the Book apologizes to the children. It has no apology to offer those grown folks who insist that facts, never fancies, are what children need.

CONTENTS
The Disobedient Woodpecker
(French)
Mother Magpie’s Kindergarten
(Isle of Wight)
The Gorgeous Goldfinch
(Roumanian)
King of the Birds
(Gascon)
Halcyone
(Greek)
The Forgetful Kingfisher
(German)
The Wren who brought Fire
(French)
How the Bluebird crossed
(Samoan)
The Peacock’s Cousin
(Arabic, Malay)
The Masquerading Crow
(Russian)
King Solomon and the Birds – Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
(Arabic)
The Pious Robin
(Breton, Basque, Greek)
The Robin who was an Indian
(Ojibway)
The Inquisitive Woman
(Roumanian)
Why the Nightingale wakes
(French)
Mrs. Partridge’s Babies
(Greek)
The Early Girl
(Roumanian)
How the Blackbird spoiled his Coat
(French)
The Blackbird and the Fox
(French)
The Dove who spoke Truth
(Welsh)
The Fowls on Pilgrimage
(Greek)
The Ground-Pigeon
(Malay)
Sister Hen and the Crocodile
(Congo Negro)
The Thrush and the Cuckoo
(Roumanian, German)
The Owl and the Moon
(Malay)
The Tufted Cap
(Ainu, Japanese Islands)
The Good Hunter
(Iroquois)
The Courtship of Mr. Stork and Miss Heron
(Russian)
The Phœnix
(Egyptian)

*