A birds' table hung with wires
All over the country, laws to protect birds are being introduced into legislatures. Boys and girls may think that they cannot do much to help make laws. They can if their fathers are in the legislature as lots of fathers are, take the country over. Maybe your father does not know how much birds are worth. Get him to read the bulletins issued by the government. The boys who protect the birds around home will be the law makers some fine day themselves. They'll "see to it," then.
But now what can you do to-day? Is it winter? Feed the birds. There are many winter bird residents. Where are the insects in winter? Have they gone south? Not a bit of it. They lurk under the bark on your apple trees. They hide on the fence rails and under the leaves. Trust the birds to find them unless snow prevents. The extra feeding you give them will not toll them away from the insect food they love, but will keep them "on the job" and will keep them from starving in stormy weather. Water, too, they often suffer for in winter. Supply it in shallow basins and slightly warmed. Tie suet to the trees; sacks made of loose netting will hold nut meats for them. Scatter grain for the grain eaters on a platform.
In spring furnish nesting places and material, protection from cats and distressing disturbances; mud for robins, string for orioles, floss, feathers, and straw for others. Do something every day for your birds. Drinking fountains are a necessity, especially in towns where there is no running water. Shallow basins are best. They will often come right to the door and drink or bathe, unless frightened by some real or fancied danger. To make the birds tame you must make them feel safe, and supply their wants.
THE TRAFFIC IN BIRD SKINS
Not many girls wear birds' feathers in their hats. But many women do, and girls get to be women very soon. No one knows how many birds are slaughtered in America each year for hat trimmings. A few facts are available such as: seventy thousand skins were sent in four months from a small district on Long Island; one New York house contracts to furnish to Paris forty thousand skins in one season; four hundred thousand bird skins from America sold in one London auction room in three months. These numbers fairly stagger the reader. I don't know one American girl who would kill a bird. If every one of them would refuse ever to wear any bird feathers there would be a great falling off in this traffic.
Collecting birds' eggs and nests is still quite common, and should be discouraged. The present state of the bird population does not warrant the destruction of any except for the big museums. Their collectors are trained experts who collect only such birds as are needed for scientific purposes. They go at the right season to do the least damage, and they do not slaughter by wholesale.
Besides cats, which can be regulated to a certain extent in our homes, birds have other enemies. Crows, though valuable insect eaters, are bad nest robbers and have been caught in the act of killing nestlings and even small adult birds. Snakes eat both eggs and young. Guards for cats will keep out squirrels which molest the birds' nests. Ground nesting birds may be protected with wire netting. Where this has been tried, in no case did it cause birds to desert the nests.
Birds need thickets, hedge-rows and shrubbery for nesting places, hiding places, and shelter from storms.
Every farmer who kills the birds on his place justifies the destruction by the evidence that they eat fruit. True, some of them do. But if water is provided many of them prefer it to fruit juice. To preserve our strawberries and cherries, we should plant June berry and Russian mulberry, which the birds like better. Chokeberry, buckthorn, elder berry, and mulberry will attract birds away from blackberry and raspberry patches. Wild cherry will protect the grapes, as both ripen late.