The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-06-28
BIRD NESTING.

It is sad fact that bird nesting
 and bird destruction" are practically
 synonymous terms That is to say, the
 majority of people who make a prac-
 tice of hunting for birds nests do so
 for the purpose of taking the eggs or young. Outside of the professional egg 1 hunters, who take certain kinds of eggs
 by carloads and even by train loads, ! perhaps the most dangerous bird-nest-
 CTS as class, are the small school l boys They have plenty of time on | their hands as rule, they have pretty | good eyesight, and most of them can
 climb more or less They usually hunt
 in gangs, which SCOUT the woods and | fields climbing every tree and crawling
 into every bush they come to, and among them they find most of the nests along their line of march, l have often
 met such a party with a cap or hat
 nearly full of eggs of different kinds.
 Seldom indeed was there a boy amongst them who could identify any but the very commonest of the eggs they had taken, As a rule, some of these were
 broken, and others in different stages of l incubation, all jumbled together like so many marbles. And the boys them-
 selves were not bad, by any means; only thoughtless. They had no idea of ever
 studying the eggs; they simply enjoyed
 the excitement of hunting for the nests, and securing their contents, and it nev- CT for a moment occurred to them that heir hatful of eggs was in reality some
 two hundred dead birds, which they had killed in a single afternoon They could hardly be blamed for admiring
 such beautiful objects as birds eggs,
 but. as Chapman remarks, a hatful of colored pebbles would have answered
 every purpose. It is safe to say of such
 collections that not one in ten thousand
 is put to real scientific use. The high
 est object attained as rule, is cahi-
 net full of pretty eggshells to be pulled
 out and shown to visitors. But the av-
 craze nest-robber does not get even as
 far as the cabinet stage, Such of his
 specimens as are not broken before he
 reaches home, or in the blowing process
 afterwards, usually lie around the house
 for few days. or possibly weeks, and
 then find their way to the ash-heap.
 Now, I believe that the average boy
 is a very decent fellOw-neither mean,
 cruel nor unreasonable. There is a spirit of fairness about him, and if,
 through thoughtlessness. he does an un-
 fair act, that spirit can be appealed to
 by any one for whom he has respect. It requires very little argument to show
 that bird-nesting as it is usually con ducted is very unfair, not to say heart lessly cruel. Every ono who has robbed a birds nest must remember the grief and terror of the parent birds, and un- less he was utterly hardened he must have pitied their helplessness, even as
 he took away from them that which they loved almost more than their own lives Every manly boy can and should be made to see, not only the cruelty of taking eggs and young birds from the nest but the unseleesness of it-the folly of it. He should not be prevented from bird-nesting, however. On the contrary, he should be encouraged to hunt for nests, but with an object for more useful and far more fascinating than the emre collection of eggs. What l is really needed. and needed badly, is of living birds in their natu- ral haunts. and an intelligent school | boy, if he goes at it in the proper spirit, | is as well able to acquire this knOWl- | edge as any one else. Let him get rid l of any idea that the habits of the birds | are already known; after he has care | fully studied any one bird for year | or a season, he will find that he knows | many things about that bird which no | one else knows and which he cannot | find in any book.
 There is no better place to study a | bird than in the vicinity of its nest | Before the eggs are matched one of the l parents is sitting all the time and the | other is not far away as a rule; after the young appear the old ones visit 1 them continually from dawn until dusk. | One interesting way for a boy to study ] the birds and their nests Is to find all 1 the nests he possibly can in a given and then visit each nest once a day. and see how things are going along. Of course, it is not necessary to look into the nest every day. except in certain special cases, and he should nave with him a field-glass, that he may watch the birds at distance, and thus avoid disturbing them too much Of course. he should first make quite sure to what species each nest belongs and then in a notebook he should iot | flown everything he can find out about each nest and it's occupants. If it is in