Bird Social.
Choose a pleasant, sunny room for your bird social, deck it with green boughs and foliage, and provide places for a number of cages. Invite the Juniors all to come, and ask those that have canaries or other pet birds in cages to bring them. Of course this social must be held in the daytime, and in mild if not warm weather. If the moving is done gently, the birds will enjoy the social as much as the Juniors, or even more, and you will have a gay concert. Let some experienced bird-owner give a little talk to the Juniors on the best ways of caring for their birds. It will be likely to save the life of some feathered songster, for not every one, however careful and tender-hearted, understands just how to keep the pets happy and healthy, as birds should be when at their best.
It may interest the Juniors to know that one of King Edward’s latest fancies is improving the singing of English canaries. He has had fitted up in Windsor Castle a large aviary to which hundreds of English canaries have been sent. Here bird-trainers from Germany are busy improving the voice of the English canary by means of “bird-organs” and the suggestion found in hearing the better-voiced German canary sing. The birds pass through a regular course of singing-lessons, and take from three to six months to “finish.”
After the talk about caring for birds, which should be so informal that the children should feel free to ask questions, a little fun is introduced in the way of a bird-guessing game, conducted as follows:
Write on a blackboard, or blackboards, part or all of these twenty-four questions, which are plays on the names of well-known American birds. The guests should be provided with paper and pencils. Half an hour should be allowed for the guessing. At the end of that time everybody should pass his list to his right-hand neighbor and correct the list which has been handed to him. Some one should read the answers slowly.
1. The way some English people pronounce a word which means “yell.” (Owl—howl.)
2. A letter of the alphabet. (Jay—J.)
3. The bird that chews its cud. (Cowbird.)
4. A bad-tempered William. (Crossbill.)