Читать книгу Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and School - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 19

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“When places become thickly settled, and villages grow into towns and towns into cities, one of the first things that troubles the father and mother of a family is to find house-room, a suitable place to live, that shall be healthful for the children, and yet not be too far from the father’s work, and many and many a family have had to move to inconvenient places because such a home could not be found near by.

“Strange as it may at first seem, our little fellow-citizens, the birds, have this same trouble.

“In an open, half-wooded farming country there are plenty of nesting haunts, and running brooks and ponds for the birds who need water by their homestead. But presently perhaps a railway comes by; the land is bought up and the woods cut down for railway ties, the brush is cleared from old pastures and they are turned into house-lots. Old orchards, like ours here, are done away with, and everything is ‘cleaned up.’

“This is as it should be, and a sign of progress; but where are the birds that Nature has told to nest in tree hollows, like the Bluebird, Chickadee, the Tree Swallow, Downy and Hairy Woodpecker, and the jolly Yellowhammer, to find homes?

“You will often hear people say, ‘It is too bad the Bluebirds are dying out;’ but if somewhere about the place you will fasten a hollow log or a square bird-box with a single round opening in it to a high fence-post or to a pole set up on purpose, you will soon see that the Bluebirds have not died out, but that they have been discouraged in their house-hunting.

“It is a mistake to make bird-houses too large, or to have many rooms in them, unless you are hoping to attract Purple Martins, who like to live in colonies. Birds like a whole building to themselves quite as well as people, and they do not like people to come too close and peep in at their windows and doors, either.

“Autumn and winter are the best seasons for making and placing bird-boxes; it gives time for them to become ‘weathered’ before nesting time, and birds are apt to be suspicious of anything that looks too new and fine, and I have a plan that I think you will like by which you boys can not only make bird-houses for your own yards and farms, but make them to sell to others as well.

“It is also a kind act for those who live on farms to leave a few stacks of cornstalks or a sheaf of rye standing in a fence corner as a shelter for the game-birds, who are often driven by cold to burrow in the snow for cover, and, frequently, when the crust freezes above them, die of starvation.

“Doing this is wise as well as kind, for it helps to keep alive and increase these valuable food-birds, and makes better sport for the farmers in the time when the law says they may go a-hunting.

“Of course, in every country school even, there are children who do not live on farms, but these can club together and do what they can to feed and shelter the birds that come about the schoolhouse. You have all seen Goldilocks’ lunch-table for feeding the winter birds, and though Sarah Barnes would like to have such a one down at the school, others perhaps may think it foolish.

“As you already know, some birds eat insects and others seed foods, or, to put it another way, some birds prefer meat and some bread; so if you wish to suit all kinds you must feed them with sandwiches, made of both bread and meat.

“ ‘Sandwiches for birds!—how foolish!’ I hear some one say. Stop and think a moment, and you will see that it is merely a way of expression, a figure of speech, as it is called.

“Give the birds the material, crumbs, cracked corn, hayloft sweepings, bits of fat bacon, suet, or bones that have some rags of meat attached, and they will make their own sandwiches, each one to its taste.

“If this food is merely scattered upon the ground, it will attract mice, rats, and other rodents, but if a regular lunch-counter is prepared for the food you will find that the birds will appreciate the courtesy, become liberal customers, and run up a long bill; this, however, they will pay with music when spring comes.