THE DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS

From almost all sections of the country comes the plaint that the song birds are fast disappearing. Less and less numerous are the yearly visitations of the thrushes, warblers, song sparrows, orioles, and the others whose habits have been so delightful and whose music has been so cheering to their open-eyed and open-hearted friends. Many, who when listening to the hymn-like cadences of the wood thrush have felt that the place was holy ground, are now keenly regretting that this vesper song is so rare; the honest sweetness of the song sparrow mingles with the coarser sounds less often in the accustomed places. Not many now find “the meadows spattered all over with music” by the bobolink, as Thoreau did.

John Burroughs says that the bluebird is almost extinct in his section of country. The writer, though a frequent visitor to the fields and woods, has succeeded in seeing only one pair of these beautiful birds in two seasons, where they were abundant a few years ago, when almost every orchard bore a good crop of them. A friend who is a good observer has had the same experience. A careful exploration of the country within a radius of five miles resulted in the discovery of only two pairs of bobolinks, having their nests luckily in the same field. The males sang together in friendly rivalry. The sparkling, tinkling notes seemed to come in a rippling tumble, two or three at a time, from each throat. Each started his song with his feet barely touching his perch, his body quivering, his wings half extended, as if he were almost supported by the upward flow of his melody. After circular flights he alighted first upon one frail, swinging perch, then upon another, the wonderful sounds not ceasing, as if he were tracing magic rings of song round his home, and making them thick in places. It was a musical embodiment of the love of life and of its joyousness.

The brown thrush is also absent from places where once there were many. A farmer in this neighborhood states that a few years ago the treetops near his house seemed to be filled with these fine singers. Now he hears only one or two during the season. Last May the writer found three nests at least a mile apart, but they were destroyed before the time of hatching, and the birds went about silent as if brooding upon their trouble. It is doubtful if they will build next season in that vicinity. No doubt the clearing away of the forests and the settling up of the country are responsible for the scarcity of the birds in part, but only in part. If they were let alone, many of the most interesting and useful birds would build near even our city homes, and our gardens and fields would again become populous with them.

The wearing of feathers and the skins of birds for ornament is the chief cause of the final flight of many of our songsters. It is stated that a London dealer received at one time more than thirty thousand dead humming birds. Not only brightly colored birds, but any small birds, by means of dyes, may come at last to such base uses. It is estimated by some of the Audubon societies that ten million birds were used in this country in one season. All these bodies, which are used to make “beauty much more beauteous seem,” are steeped in arsenical solutions to prevent their becoming as offensive to the nostrils of their wearers as they are to the eyes of bird lovers.

The use of dead birds for adornment is a constant object lesson in cruelty, a declaration louder than any words that a bird’s life is not to be respected. It is currently reported that a million bobolinks were destroyed in Pennsylvania alone last year to satisfy the demand of the milliners. If this “garniture of death” is in good taste, then our North American Indian in his war paint and feathers was far ahead of his time.

Let us hope that some oracle of fashion will decree that if the remains of animals must be used for adornment, the skins of mice and rats shall be offered up. Their office seems to be principally that of scavengers, and their gradual but certain extinction would not matter if the Christian nations should become, pari passu, more cleanly. The squirrel could also be used effectively, mounted as if half flying, with his hind feet fastened to the velvet pedestal, or sitting upon his haunches with a nut between his fore paws. The squirrel’s main concern seems to be to prevent the undue extension of the nut-bearing trees an office man has already well taken upon himself and besides, he destroys fruit, injures trees, and is a great enemy of birds. His gradual extinction would be tolerated by a civilized nation.

All these things may take the hues of the rainbow and are capable of infinite variety of arrangement. There certainly seems to be no good reason why in a few years some combination of them may not be considered as effective as a row of dead humming birds. The world may be saved in this way from presenting a spectacle that should excite the pity of gods and men the spectacle of the destruction of one of the most beautiful, the most harmless, and the most useful classes of creation, at the command of the senseless whims of fashion.

Then, too, the sportsmen’s guns and the small boys’ slings and shooters of various sorts are constantly bringing down numbers of the feathered songsters. In many parts of our country men and boys roam the fields, shooting at every bird they see, and their action is tacitly approved by the community. This survival of the barbarous instinct to kill is condoned as “sport.” If these people were to spend this time in following the birds with opera glass and notebook to study them, they might not be so readily understood they might even be taken for mild lunatics, so utterly is public sentiment perverted on this subject.

A little consideration shows this destruction to be more disastrous than at first appears. According to the latest biological science, every species of animals must have long ago reached the limit beyond which it could not greatly increase its numbers. However great its tendency to increase might be, its natural obstacles and enemies would increase in like proportions till at last the two would balance each other, and there could be no further increase in the number of individuals of that species. All classes of animals in a state of nature must have reached this balanced condition generations ago. This is true of the birds. Their natural enemies are capable of preventing their increase; that is, they can and do destroy every year as many as are hatched that year. Now if man be added as a new destructive agency, the old enemies, being still able to destroy as many as before, will soon sweep them out of existence. Warnings have been sent out by the United States Department of Biology that several species of birds are already close to extinction. We know that this is true of the passenger pigeon. This bird used to come North in flocks so extensive as sometimes to obscure the sun, like a large, thick cloud. Now they come no more. Italy is practically songless, we are told.

If man would right the wrong that he has done, he must not only stop destroying the birds, but he must take all possible means to preserve them and to protect them from their natural foes.

Laws for bird protection have been passed in many of our states; but these have been found effective only where they were not needed. They are, however, right, and will help in the development of correct sentiment. What is most needed is knowledge of the birds themselves, their modes of life, their curious ways, and their relations to the scheme of things. To know a bird is to love him. Birds are beautiful and interesting objects of study, and make appeals to children that are responded to with delight.

Children love intensely the forms of nature the clouds, the trees, the flowers, the animals all of the great beautiful world outside of themselves, and it is their impulse to become acquainted with this world; for this they feel enthusiasm and love. Marjorie Fleming, the little playmate of Scott, who at the age of six could recite passages from Shakespeare and Burns so that the great bard would sob like a child or shout with laughter, may be taken as the universal voice of childhood. She writes in her diary, “I am going to a delightful place where there is ducks, cocks, hens, bubblejacks, two dogs, two cats and swine which is delightful.” In another place she says, “Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the company of swine, geese, cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul.”

The waste of time in our public schools has been commented upon and some of the causes have been pointed out; but is not the chief reason the fact that much of the work of the school is unrelated to the world of the child? At least the child does not see the connection. He leaves at the threshold the things which he loves and desires intensely to investigate, and begins his intellectual development with abstractions, with “the three R’s.” It is said that teachers cannot succeed unless they love their work. How can we expect children to succeed and not waste time, not become disheartened at work that, so far as they can discover, has little more relation to their interests than to the mountains of the moon?

We look to nature study to supply the missing links between the child’s life and his school work; to afford opportunities for the interested observation of things, and to furnish a strong impulse toward expression. It has been well said that the best result of the primary schools is the power to use correctly one’s own language. The chief obstacle in the development of this power is the want of an impulse to express. What can afford a stronger tendency to describe than the attempt to report observations that have been made with interest, even with delight?