"Today it is all over. A funeral dirge instead of songs of joy and gladness! Some vandals have wrecked my home and destroyed my prospective little ones! I almost wish they had taken me too. What have I done to cost me this? You said you would protect me, O man! Are you doing it? Have I proved unworthy of your good will and friendship? My record will bear me witness before any court in the land."
Presently the male bird came upon the spot, but had very little to say. What little he did say seemed to be very consoling to the mother bird. As he receded to the thick of the pasture again, the mother bird began anew her low melancholy song. How can we ever reconcile such thoughtless deeds with the higher forms of civilization! But we must return to the nest. It was not entirely destroyed, and I gathered the remains, which contained two eggs covered in the litter torn from the walls of the nest. I sawed off the post just below the nest cavity and put it in my office. The eggs were white with brownish red spots. The nest was made of fibrous roots, jute fiber lined with hair. Dr. Bachman found one made of fine wool, cotton and some fibres of plants, containing pure white eggs, the nest being in a hollow stump about four feet from the ground. It is safe to say that the chickadee is a resident bird throughout the United States and is rather abundant in the Southern states.
I have often thought that we could make ourselves far happier if we studied birds aesthetically, rather than economically, but it seems that we shall for a long time to come, count the worth of any factor in Nature by utilitarian methods. If we must do so, let us see what kind of showing our chickadee makes for herself. Let us see just what relation she bears to plant life. Edward H. Furbush finds that the chickadee feeds upon tent caterpillars and their eggs; both species of the cankerworm moth and their larvae; codling moths with their larvae; the forest tent caterpillar, and the larva chrysalis and imago of the gypsy and brown tail moths. They also eat the lice and their eggs of the apple and willow. We see then that a great deal can be said in their favor. Another thing so favorable to our little friend is that of all his or her habits of life, we know of nothing bad. All that can be said is in her favor, more than can be said of many of us.
The sad story of my chickadee's nest will suggest to all thinking people the reason why so many of our valuable birds are so rapidly vanishing or diminishing in numbers, and the urgent need for an immediate check upon our wreckless slaughter. Upon a careful count in several parts of the country it has been found that birds are a natural check upon insect pests, and not to protect and welcome them is to foster the growth of these pests. The fate of this little nest is likewise the fate of many thousand nests annually, of useful birds. Who could ever estimate the gallons of innocent blood shed at the hands of the untrained and wilfully evil bands of boys roving the woods on the Sabbath!
Robins
Recently in a letter to the Burroughs' Nature Study Clubs of a Southern state John Burroughs wrote:
"If your club can help to send back the robin to us in the spring with his breast unstained with his own blood, but glowing with the warmth of your shining and hospitable land, I shall rejoice that it bears my name."
The people in the Northern United States have courted favor with the robin and in every way possible protect him, and are always ready to welcome him back after the winter is over, and in fact, the robin is to be praised for his summer popularity as much as he is to be pitied for his winter treatment in the south. One writer says his return to the north 'is announced by the newspapers like that of eminent or notorious people to a watering place, as the first authentic notification of spring.' There, where robins are appreciated, they become quite tame and build and raise their young in the orchards and about the houses. Birds are not altogether unlike people in that they never forget favors. They always know in what sections of country they are welcomed.
When robin redbreast returns south, he comes driven by the chilly blasts of the Ice King of the north, and I regret to say has to face the Southern people with fear and trembling. Parents allow boys to take guns and go out and kill anything legally or illegally, and such boys always develop the brutal and barbarous instinct of murder—taking innocent blood. The following I clipped from the locals of a weekly newspaper in the Southern part of Georgia: