Various - Birds and All Nature, Vol. III, No. 3, March 1898

THE happiness that is added to human lives by love for the lower creatures is beyond telling. Ernest von Vogelweide, the great German lyric poet of the middle ages, so loved the birds that he left a large bequest to the monks of Wurtzburg on condition that they should feed the birds every day on the tomb-stone over his grave.

Of St. Francis of Assisi's love and tenderness for birds and animals many beautiful stories have been told. The former he particularly loved, and 'tis related they were wont to fly to him, while he talked to, and blessed them. From the hands of a cruel boy he once rescued a pigeon, emblem of innocence and purity, made a nest for it, and watched over it and its young.

Of George Stephenson, the inventor, a beautiful story is told. One day in an upper room of his home he closed the window. Two or three days afterwards, however, he observed a bird flying against, and violently beating its wings as though trying to break the window. His sympathy and curiosity were aroused. What could the little creature want? The window was opened and the bird flew to one particular spot. Alas! one look into the little nest and the bird with the worm still in its beak which he had brought to the mother and his four little ones, fluttered to the floor. Stephenson lifted the exhausted bird, and tried to revive it. But all his efforts proved in vain. At that time the force of George Stephenson's mind was changing the face of the earth; yet he wept at the sight of the dead family and grieved because he had all unconsciously been the cause of their death.

THE United States Department of Agriculture issued in July, 1896, a circular suggesting that a "Bird Day" be added to the school calendar. In this circular J. Sterling Morton, Secretary of Agriculture, says:

"The cause of bird protection is one that appeals to the best side of our natures. Let us yield to the appeal. Let us have a Bird Day – a day set apart from all the other days of the year to tell the children about the birds. But we must not stop here. We should strive continually to develop and intensify the sentiment of bird protection, not alone for the sake of preserving the birds, but also for the sake of replacing as far as possible the barbaric impulses inherent in child nature by the nobler impulses and aspirations that should characterize advanced civilization."

Prof. C. A. Babcock, superintendent of schools, Oil City, Pa., who has acted upon the suggestion in his schools, says:

"The preservation of the birds is not merely a matter of sentiment, or of education in that high and fine feeling, kindness to all living things. It has an utilitarian side of vast extent, as broad as our boundless fields and our orchards' sweep. The birds are necessary to us. Only by their means can the insects which injure, and if not checked, destroy vegetation, be kept within bounds…

"What is most needed is the knowledge of the birds themselves, their modes of life, their curious ways, and their relation to the scheme of things. To know a bird is to love him. Birds are beautiful and interesting objects of study and make appeals to children that are responded to with delight."

OF course we know where the English Sparrow spends his Christmas. And the Snowbird came down in October and is with us yet. Likewise the Bluejay is here in many of our yards, and is quite respectable – like Eugene Field's boy, now that there are no eggs to eat nor young birds to destroy. The Redhead Woodpecker is probably in the deeper woods, though I have not yet seen him this winter. Sometimes he goes south and digs grubs off the tall, dead, southern trees.

But we may be interested in where some of our departed friends are Christmasing.

All our other Woodpeckers stay with us – except the Yellowhammer. He has taken to feeding upon the ground a good deal of late and does not like it frozen.

The Redbreasted Woodpecker and our two little Sapsuckers as we call them, are always here in the winter – the most optimistic birds we have.

I heard the Nuthatch only a few days ago. I did not see him but I knew by the way he talked through his nose that he was hanging head down on some nearby tree. The only other little bird that climbs up tree trunks – except the Woodpeckers – is the Browncreeper, a rather rare bird with us. Some years ago one of the public school teachers sent me one that a little boy had found so chilled that it was helpless; so I suspect that he ought to spend Christmas further south – for his health.

In the woods, the Tree-Sparrow, associating with the Snowbird, occasionally sings us a Christmas Carol – the only bird here now from which we may expect a song, unless some vernal day should loose the syrinx of the Cardinal, or provoke the " fee-bee " of the Crested Titmouse.

Christmas is on the vernal side of the winter solstice and any sunny day thereabout is more like spring than autumn.

Sometimes in warm swampy places, the Fox-Sparrow spends the winter about us, but I have never seen any here, though they are on the river about Louisiana, Mo., now, I suspect, along with the Winter-Wren. They both sing occasionally in winter.

On our high backbone position here at Mexico, between the rivers, we are not favorably situated for bird study because the little feathered folks prefer the deep tangles of the river bottoms, and they appreciate the fact that it is naturally warmer there also. Even Robins and Bluebirds sometimes stop in these over winter here in Missouri.