Birds and Birding's Guide to:
Watching THE SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS
THE SONG BIRDS
(Superfamily Oscines)
"It is unfortunate,”says Mr. Ridgway,”that no better vernacular name for this group of passerine birds has been invented or seems available. The term is certainly both inappropriate and misleading, since by no means all Oscines are songsters (some of them, in fact, being almost voiceless), while the Pseudoscines and many of the Clamatores are as much gifted with musical ability as the average oscinine songster.”However, as the term has been long in use, and is not likely to be supplanted by another of even as general applicability, it may be accepted with the limitations implied above. As here defined, the Oscines embrace no less than forty-nine so-called”families,”although but few of them can be considered as very trenchant groups. With such a multiplicity of forms to deal with, it is absolutely necessary that some division should be made, else the consideration would be involved in a hopeless tangle.