OFF FOR THE SOUTH
If you want to get better acquainted with ostriches you should read Olive Thorne Miller's "African Nine Feet High," in "Little Folks in Feathers and Fur." Carpenter deals with the ostrich in his "How the World is Clothed" and in his "Geographic Reader on Africa"; Johonnott's "Neighbors with Wings and Fins" gives a chapter to "Giants of Desert and Plain," among which you may be sure he includes the ostrich.
Allen, in writing about "Some Strange Nurseries" ("Nature's Work Shop"), tells why it is Papa Ostrich has most to do with the hatching of the eggs when the sun is not on the job.
Lucas, in his "Animals of the Past," speaks of ostriches and crocodiles as the nearest living relatives of—guess what—the dinosaurs! (Yet look at the dinosaur in "The Strange Adventures of a Pebble" and see if you can't make out a good deal of the ostrich and the crocodile in him.)
But, speaking of Papa Ostrich's parental duties, did you know that it's Mr. Puffin, and not Mrs. Puffin, who digs the family burrow? Arabella Buckley's "Morals of Science" tells that and many other interesting things about devoted husbands among the birds, including how Papa Nightingale feeds Mamma Nightingale.
In the "Children's Hour," Volume 7, page 310, you will find an interesting article about the puffins of Iceland.
"The Romance of Animal Arts and Crafts" tells about one of the feathered clay-workers, the nuthatch of Syria, and why he makes his nest look like a rock. These nuthatches love to build so well that they often make nests that they never use; and they even help put up nests for their neighbors!
This book also gives interesting details about the hornbill, and how and why he walls up his mate in her nest in the hollow of a tree. Father Hornbill, of course, gets all the meals for Mother Hornbill, while she's setting. She simply can't get out, and you should see him by the time the babies are old enough to leave the nest. He's worn to a shadow!
Rooks, it seems, do a little digging under certain circumstances. Selous tells about it in his "Bird Life Glimpses." In this book you will find a delightful description of martins building. It almost makes you want to be a martin. It also tells about the work of the sand martins. You will hardly believe how fast they work. The house-martin's nest is more elaborate than the swallow's. This book tells why the house-martins begin work so early in the morning, and why they have to delay their nest-building if the weather is either too wet or too dry.
White, in his famous "Natural History of Selbourne," tells how worried he was because certain swallows just would build facing southeast and southwest.
Birds, besides being workers of the soil, are great sowers of seeds. Darwin tells how he reared eighty seedlings from a single little clod on a bird's foot. What do you suppose he did that for? You just look it up in the index to his "[Origin of Species]."
Doesn't it seem funny that one of the little farmer birds—a burrower—should go into partnership with a lizard? There is one in New Zealand that does that very thing. He is called the titi. What the titi does for the lizard is to provide him with a home in his burrow, but what do you suppose the lizard does in return to pay for his lodging? Read about it in Ingersoll's "Wit of the Wild," in the chapter on "Animal Partnerships."
Do you know why the phœbe bird so often uses moss in building her nest? And how the phœbes that make green nests keep them green? And how Mrs. P. puts a stone roof on her house? You will find all about it in "Wit of the Wild."
The same chapter, "The Phœbe at Home," tells why the phœbe bird took to building under bridges, and why she builds in a carriage shed instead of a barn, as the barn-swallow does.
"Bird Life," by Chapman, is a guide to the study of our common birds. The beauty about this book is that it has seventy-five full-page plates in the natural colors, with brief descriptions, so that all you have to do is to bring the mind picture of the bird you have seen alongside the picture in the book, and there's the answer! Nobody has written more delightful books on birds than Olive Thorne Miller. "[Little Brothers of the Air]" is one of them. You couldn't keep your hands off a book with a name like that, could you? Then there is her "Children's Book of Birds," "True Bird Stories," illustrated by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and "Little Folks in Feathers and Fur," which, as you can see, goes outside the bird family. John Burroughs's "[Wake Robin]" deals not with robins alone, but with birds and bird habits in general.
But the greatest book about birds—the wonder of the bird and his relations to the whole animal world—is very properly called "The Bird," by C. William Beebe, who is at the head of the bird department of the great New York Zoo. Among other things it tells:
How Nature practised drawing—so to speak—for years before she could finally make a proper bird. (If you have ever tried to draw a bird from memory and realized what a bad job you made out of it, you will sympathize with her.) How they know that the earliest birds Nature made, as well as being very homely, weren't at all smart; not to be mentioned in the same breath with clever Jim Crow, for example. How "a bird's swaddling clothes and his first full-dress are cut from the same piece," the very words of the book. About certain birds that have one set of wings to play in and a new set for flying, like a child wearing jumpers to save his nice clothes! About the world of interesting things you can discover with the bones of a boiled chicken.
And so on for nearly five hundred pages, and as many illustrations; the most striking collection of pictures explaining birds that I ever saw.
THE END OF A BUSY SEASON
"And there's the corn and the pumpkins and the carrots and the turnips and the potatoes in the root cellar and the jelly in the jelly-glasses—we helped make them all."