The Bird Study Book

by T. Gilbert Pearson

During the school year that followed the matter was brought to the attention of many of the Southern teachers, and over five hundred Junior Audubon societies resulted, with an enrollment of more than ten thousand children. Following the course of instruction outlined in the literature furnished to the teachers, these children were taught the correct names of many of the common birds, and on field walks they learned to know them by sight. The dates when certain birds were last seen in autumn and first arrived in spring were noted and carefully recorded. Food was given to the birds in winter and bird boxes of various patterns were constructed and placed in parks, orchards, or woods where they would most likely be of service to birds looking for suitable nesting hollows. Bird study was correlated with reading, English composition, history, geography, and even arithmetic.

A Nation-wide Movement.—So successful did this experiment prove that the Audubon workers agreed upon extending this same system into the schools of all the other States in the Union, and the various Provinces of Canada. The fall of 1911, therefore, saw plans well under way for a greatly enlarged scope of work. During the school year, which closed the last of June, 1912, the Association, at a cost of thirteen thousand dollars, enrolled 29,369 school children under the standard bearing the inscription "Protect the Birds."

The movement has continued to grow, and up to June 1, 1916, there had been formed 27,873 classes with a total membership of 559,840 children. The Association is annually expending on this work $25,000 more than the children's fees amount to. Of this amount Mrs. Sage continues to contribute one-fifth, the remaining four-fifths being given by an anonymous friend of children and birds. In supplying these pupils and their teachers with the necessary pictures, leaflets, and outline drawings of birds for colouring, over thirty-one million pages of printed information have been distributed. Pupils have taken hold of this bird study with great zest. Many a dull or inattentive boy, who had been a despair to his teacher and parents, responded to this real nature teaching which took him from his ordinarily uninteresting studies into the wide out of doors. Thousands of teachers have written letters filled with expressions of thankfulness for this opportunity which has come to them and reciting details of the variety of ways in which they have been able to make use of this plan and material for bird study.

What One Teacher Did.—Here, for example, is one from Miss Beth Merritt, who teaches in a little school at Fountain City, Tennessee: "I am very glad to write to you about the Junior Audubon Class we had at school this year. We all enjoyed it exceedingly, and I am sure it did good in the hearts and lives of the little people who were members and in the bird world, too. A year ago I invited the children of some of the other grades to join our Audubon Class and we had over forty members. We had our meetings on Friday afternoons after school. The class was quite successful and we saw some direct results of its success. Several nest-robbing boys gave up that 'sport' altogether. One boy was instrumental in bringing about the arrest of some men who had been shooting song birds. This year I had the class only in my own grade—the second. Almost every child in the room joined, making twenty members. I had daily periods for nature study and language, and every other Friday we used these two periods for the Audubon Class. The children were always anxious for the Audubon Fridays to come. They used often to ask, 'Is to-morrow Bird Day, Miss Beth?' and if I answered in the affirmative, I heard 'Oh, goody,' [248] and 'I won't forget to wear my button,' and 'I wonder what bird it will be,' from every side. Rarely ever did we have an absent mark on Bird Day.

"After we had used all ten of the leaflets you sent us, we had lessons on some of the other birds, or, instead of a regular lesson, we went for a bird walk. I divided the class for these walks, taking ten children at a time. How excited they would get over the birds they saw! Nearly always they could identify the birds themselves, sometimes I helped them, sometimes my bird book helped me, and sometimes we had to write in the notebooks, 'unknown.' I will not try to tell you about all the good results of our Audubon Class that I have noticed. The most important thing I think is that a few more children have a keen interest and a true love for their little brothers of the air. Last year a favourite pastime of a neighbour was shooting birds for his cat, and I think he was no more particular than his cat as to the kind of birds he destroyed. His little daughter was a member of the Audubon Class and this spring I notice our neighbour's cat has to catch its own birds. Perhaps, if the little girl can be an Audubon member another year, there will be no more cat!

"A mother of another little member of the class used to delight in birds' plumes, breasts, or feathers of some kind on her hat. Her spring hat this year was trimmed in ribbon. I have heard several bird lovers say that they have noticed more of our common wild birds about this place than there were last year, and they believe the Junior Audubon societies in the schools have brought about this happy state. When school closed many of the mothers came to me and said that they wished to thank me for what I had done for their children along the line of nature study, especially of birds. They said that they thought the Junior Audubon Class a splendid thing for their children. And I think it is equally good for the teachers."

Another Junior Club leader, Miss Edna Stafford, a teacher in the public schools of Albany, Indiana, writes: "One day last summer a twelve-year-old boy was out in our street with an airgun shooting at every bird he could see. Recently this same boy came to me with a bird that was hurt, and in a most sympathetic tone said: 'Who do you suppose could have been mean enough to hurt this dear little bird?' Our study of birds in the Junior Audubon Class brought about this change in the boy."

Junior Game Protectors.—Another leader reported from Nashville that the one thousand junior members in the schools there had turned into voluntary bird wardens, and spied upon every man or boy who went afield with a gun. In a number of places the juniors have built and sold bird boxes by hundreds and used the proceeds for advancing the work. In one town the juniors had a most successful tag day, and collected funds that were used to buy grain with which to feed birds in winter. In Connecticut a most helpful and stimulating communication has been established between many of the classes. A junior class in the Logan School, Minneapolis, has even started the publication of a magazine called Owaissa, after the Indian name for Bluebird, as given in Longfellow's "Hiawatha."

Sending Birds' Nests to City Children.—Mrs. Anthony W. Dimock, of Peekamose, New York, makes the following interesting report:

"The Robin Junior Audubon Circle is composed of the boys and girls of three district schools in a Catskill Mountain valley. No one school has enough pupils of required age to form a circle, and the distances between them are so great that frequent meetings cannot be held, but good work is being done.