The birds will stay with you wherever you live, even if it is on a lonely island or a western prairie. There will be garden parties, and morning concerts, and evening serenades, and visiting birds will drop into your yards and stop awhile. Birds are just like other people; they like to take a meal with a neighbor now and then. It makes good feeling on both sides.
Any one can have a fine collection of beautiful birds without going to the museums. Not dead, stuffed, songless creatures, who cannot say "Thank you" for a crumb, or warble you a melody in return for a home in your yard. You can have this splendid collection flying from tree to tree, and making cradles among the flowers, and giving a garden party every day in the year, even though the snow lies on the ground.
There are wise people who study birds all their lives, never killing the little things to put away in a drawer with camphor balls. Such people come to love the birds very much, and to know their sweet, wise doings in a way that a person with a gun can never know them. Sick people can sit in the sunshine or in the shade and study the birds, and grow stronger as well as wiser.
There are some strange collections of birds to be found in milliners' shops. The milliners are not to blame for these, for if good and kind people did not want any out of their collection, they would not keep so many.
Sometime on your way home from school, if your mother is not wanting to see you early, look in at these show windows and see the collections we are speaking of. These birds are sold to foolish women and girls, and worn to church and everywhere else on hats and bonnets.
See how distressed the poor dead creatures seem to be,—how they are twisted all out of shape. They are made to squat or perch in positions that make them look as if they were in agony. Not one of them all has a natural, happy look, because the people who put them up to sell have never loved the birds nor studied their ways. All they care about is the money they can get for them.
You will notice that some of the birds in ladies' bonnets have been cut in two. Sometimes just the head and wings are to be seen. If these ladies stopped to see what they were doing, and to think of how ridiculous they look, they would never wear these ornaments, just like savages.
Snowy Heron.