Learning About Birds Through Stories

31. SENATOR GEORGE F. HOAR'S WONDERFUL PETITION FOR THE BIRDS
32. BIRDS AND THEIR ENEMIES
33. MIGRATION OF BIRDS
34. TO THE CUCKOO
35. THE PASSING OF THE PASSENGER-PIGEON

THIS great man was one of the finest lawyers and ablest men in his day. For many years he represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate.

He lived a busy life, but he did not forget to plead for the birds. He made an appeal to the Massachusetts Legislature, which resulted in a law prohibiting the wearing of song-birds on women's hats. He made the birds speak for themselves in these beautiful and touching words:

"To the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

"We, the song-birds of Massachusetts and their playfellows, make this petition

"We know more about you than you think we do. We know how good you are. We have hopped about the roofs and looked in at the windows of the houses you have built for poor and sick and hungry people and little lame and deaf and blind children. We have built our nests in the trees and sung many a song as we flew about the gardens and parks you have made so beautiful for your own children, especially for your poor children, to play in.

"Every year we fly a great way over the country, keeping all the time where the sun is bright and warm; and we know that when you do anything, other people all over the great land between the seas and the Great Lakes find it out, and pretty soon will try to do the same thing. We know; we know.

"We are Americans, just as you are. Some of us, like some of you, came from across the great sea, but most of us have lived here a long while; and birds like us welcomed your fathers when they came here many years ago. Our fathers and mothers have always done their best to please your fathers and mothers.

"Now, we have a sad story to tell you. Thoughtless or bad people are trying to destroy us. They kill us because our feathers are beautiful. Even pretty and sweet girls, who we should think would be our best friends, kill our brothers and children so that they may wear their plumage on their hats.

"Sometimes people kill us for mere wantonness. Cruel boys destroy our nests and steal our eggs and our young ones. People with guns and snares lie in wait to kill us, as if the place for a bird were not in the sky, alive, but in a shop-window or under a glass case. If this goes on much longer all your song-birds will be gone. Already, we are told, in some other countries that used to be full of birds, they are almost gone.

"Now we humbly pray that you stop all this, and save us from this sad fate. You have already made a law that no one shall kill a harmless song-bird or destroy our nests or our eggs. Will you please to make another that no one shall wear our feathers, so that we shall not be killed to get them? We want them all ourselves. We are told that it is as easy for you to help us as for blackbirds to whistle.

"If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over. We will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat. We will show them how to live together in peace and love and to agree as we do in our nests. We will build pretty houses which you will like to see. We will play about your gardens and flower-beds--ourselves like flowers on wings without any cost to you. We will destroy the insects and worms that spoil your cherries and currants and plums and apples and roses. We will give you our best songs and make the spring more beautiful and the summer sweeter to you.

"Every June morning when you go into the field, Oriole and Blackbird and Bobolink will fly after you and make the day more delightful to you; and when you go home tired at sundown Vesper-sparrow will tell you how grateful we are. When you sit on your porch after dark, Fife Bird and Hermit-thrush and Wood-thrush will sing to you, and even Whippoorwill will cheer up a little. We know where we are safe. In a little while all the birds will come to live in Massachusetts again, and everybody who loves music will like to make a summer home with you.

"The signers are: Brown Thrasher, Robert O'Lincoln, Hermit-thrush, Vesper-sparrow, Robin Redbreast, Song-sparrow, Scarlet Tanager, Summer Redbird, Blue Heron, Hummingbird, Yellow Bird, Whippoorwill, Water Wagtail, Woodpecker, Pigeon Woodpecker, Indigo Bird, Yellow Throat, Wilson's Thrush, Chickadee, King Bird, Swallow, Cedar-bird, Cowbird, Martin, Veery, Vireo, Oriole, Blackbird, Fife Bird, Wren, Linnet, Pewee, Phoebe, Yoke Bird, Lark, Sandpiper, Chewink."

This petition accomplished the desired results.

NEARLY every living creature has its enemies, has to fight for its life and protection, and struggle for existence.

This is no less true of birds than of other living things. Possibly this is one of the all-wise provisions of nature to give value and added appreciation to life and existence.

As we see the birds flying about through the air and flitting from tree to tree and from twig to twig, we may think: "How free from trouble and care are the birds! How I wish I were as free as they!"

But this is not altogether so. It is true that birds have great freedom. But birds have their troubles and cares as well as do we, and have to be constantly on guard lest they suffer loss or lose their lives.

Watch them build their nests. It is generally in some secluded or protected spot, where it will not be likely to be seen or disturbed.

One spring three pairs of birds, all of different kind, built their nests and reared their young around the author's front porch. A pair of blackbirds found a little hole over the top of a beam which the carpenters had failed to close, through which they were able to get back into the framework of the house far enough to build their nest altogether out of sight.

Some robins built their nest on a cement ledge at the top of one of the large porch pillars, just under the roof, not quite out of sight, but well out of harm's way.

A pair of sparrows likewise built their nest down between two large beams, which were open at the top but closed at the bottom, altogether out of sight.

All of this showed great care on the part of these birds in looking out for safe nesting-places in which to rear their young.

While most birds have bird enemies, their worst enemies are cats, guns, and unkind, unthoughtful, and improperly educated boys, who rob their nests, shoot them, or throw stones at them.

No kind-hearted and well-educated boy would think of robbing bird's-nests or of killing these innocent and beautiful creatures created for our pleasure, welfare, and admiration.

"When will the birds come back?

Chill winter take its flight?

When will the welkin black

Be streaked with golden light?

I long for the time of flowers,

For the violet's sward of May,

For leaves and green-wreathed bowers,

With the warm south wind at play."

NIGHT and day during the late summer months and early fall, after the nesting season is over, and before cold weather comes on, the migratory birds take their departure from Northern climes and make their way back to the warm Southland.

Day by day in springtime these same birds leave the tropics and come back to their wonted resorts and nesting-places in the North to spend another season there.

In this way they enjoy a fairly equable climate the year round. They go south in the fall because the winter in the North will bring on rigorous and inclement weather and lock up their food supplies. They go north in spring to escape the excessive heat of summer in the Southland, and because nature once again smiles and verdure and food abound in the temperate belts of the Northland.

These are the urges and invitations the migratory birds receive from nature to prompt their regular periodical migratory movements.

From the human side, however, or the treatment which they receive from the people in these northern countries, the question has been raised why these birds should want to come back; for, in some respects at least, instead of encouraging their return, man has done almost everything possible to discourage and repel their coming back. "He has wiped out certain kinds of birds," says one writer, " persecuted others, cleared the forests, drained the marshes, hayed the meadows in nesting-time, turned Johnny loose with his air-gun, and spread a plague of hunting cats everywhere."

Some of these things, as this writer observes, of necessity had to be; but others have been the result of pure ignorance or premeditated and wanton destruction.

Solicitude for the presence and welfare of these migratory birds is no childish sentiment. On the contrary, it is a matter of vital concern to all. "Anybody scoffing at it," says this writer," would look better down on his knees thanking the Lord from a fervent heart for the birds that still come back; for, without them, bugs and weeds and destructive insects would soon inhabit the earth,"

Wonderful flights are made by some of these migratory birds, some, like the golden plover, making the great sweep from well down in South America to the northern portions of North America, a distance of not less than eight thousand miles.

That want of finding sufficient food in wintertime is one of the chief reasons for these migratory movements has been proved by the fact that in places where provision has been made in the North to provide these migratory birds with food through the winter months, many of the birds which formerly migrated to the South in autumn have remained north throughout the year. Learning that their food supply here could be depended upon, they cut out their migratory flights, and remained north the same as do the regular winter birds.

Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!

Thou messenger of spring!

Now heaven repairs thy rural seat,

And woods thy welcome ring.

What time the daisy decks the green,

Thy certain voice we hear.

Hast thou a star to guide thy path

Or mark the rolling year?

Delightful visitant! with thee

I hail the time of flowers,

And hear the sound of music sweet

From birds among the bowers.

The schoolboy, wandering through the woods

To pull the primrose gay,

Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,

And imitates thy lay.

What time the pea puts on the bloom,

Thou fli'st thy vocal vale,

An annual guest in other lands,

Another spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green;

Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,

No winter in thy year!

O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!

We'd make, with joyful wing,

Our annual visit o'er the globe,

Companions of the spring.

-John Logan.

Click to Enlarge

ON the floor of the New National Museum, Washington, D. C., in the section devoted to birds, there stands a large glass case which presents a most beautiful but melancholy sight.

Within this case are nine superb specimens beautifully mounted and most attractively and artistically arranged on the leaf-covered branches of a tree--of a bird that was once numbered by the hundreds of millions, but is now extinct the passenger-pigeon, or, as called by some, the wild pigeon of North America.

When the author was a boy living in northwestern Illinois, he well remembers seeing immense flocks of these birds, flocks measuring miles in length, flying about over the country. Especially in the fall, after the breeding season was over, were they to be seen in vast numbers, flying in flocks so large and dense as almost to darken the sky. Their favorite congregating and roosting-places, prior to their migrations southward, were the woods, where they found acorns, beech-nuts, and other edibles in abundance, upon which they feasted and fattened.

The large woods with which the author was most familiar was known as Genesee Grove.

Flying in such flocks and roosting in the trees; at night in such numbers, they were easy target for the hunter's shotgun. Immense numbers; were killed every year, as their flesh was esteemed an excellent food. "Pigeon pie," as might be supposed, became a favorite and famous dish with many.

The only time the author was ever really lost was one starlight night, when his father took him into a dense woods to see a "pigeon roost." After viewing one of these immense roosts, with the limbs of the trees bent almost to the ground with their weight, we started home; but, not having kept our bearings very carefully while examining and looking at the extensive roost, we soon discovered that we had lost our way.

It was then that my father taught me the value of knowing something about the stars, their names, and their positions in the heavens. In going to the roost we knew that we had traveled almost due north. So my father said, "We will keep walking until we come to an opening or clearing in the woods, and then look for the North Star; then we shall know in what direction home is."

We did as he said, and soon got our bearings, after which we had no difficulty in finding our way home.

The notation on a printed card attached to the aforementioned case in the National Museum, is of interest. It reads:

"The accounts by creditable witnesses of the immense flights of wild pigeons which swept over the Eastern and Middle States during their migrations, even as late as the latter part of the nineteenth century, almost challenge belief.

"The flocks seen in Audubon's time were estimated to number thousands of millions of individuals; and acres of forest of more than 120 square miles were so densely packed by nests and birds that trees broke down under their weight.

"Year after year prodigious numbers were killed for food, for feeding hogs, or for sport, and the supply appeared inexhaustible.

"The wanton slaughter, however, resulted in the speedy extermination of the species, and the last passenger-pigeon, a captive bird, died at the Zoological Garden in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 1, 1914.

"The food of the passenger-pigeon consisted largely of beech-nuts and acorns, especially those of the water-oak or pin-oak."

Thus reads the epitaph of these birds.

Within his lifetime and easy recollection, therefore, the author has seen the passing of the passenger-pigeon from unnumbered million to utter extinction. So far as known, not a living specimen of this once numerous and familiar bird now remains. This being so, there is no possibility of ever reviving the species. It is gone forever. Neither the children of this nor of any future generation will ever have the privilege of seeing a live passenger-pigeon.

So freely and so rapidly did men kill off these innocent-looking, beautifully-shaped, drab-colored birds, they were gone before we knew it �before any one thought of taking steps to preserve them. The same thing came nearly happening to the American Bison, or the buffalo of the Western prairies, and the fur seal of the Pacific Ocean.

In this we have a practical and striking illustration of how valuable birds and animals may become extinct unless measures are taken in time to protect and preserve them. It is well indeed that there are laws protecting different species of birds, animals, and fish, and that there are "closed seasons" for both hunting and fishing. All such laws and regulations should be scrupulously, cheerfully, and conscientiously observed and obeyed.