Part 50

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Oh if you please Give me release! Open the gate Of this cage of Fate And let me mount the South wind and go down To Bay St. Louis town, Where the brown bees hum In amber mists of pollen and perfume; And the roses gush a-bloom!

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Fainter, fainter—so My life-stream sinks—runs low. Ah! Oh! Open the cage and let me go. Floating, dreaming, revelling, dying, down To my mate, my queen, my love In the fragrant drowsy grove Beyond the flowery closes of Bay St. Louis town.

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It was very still for a moment, and something fell on Sarah Barnes’ work that was bright, but it wasn’t a needle! Then, looking across at the cage, but addressing Gray Lady, she said, “We’ve paid for the shingles, and the hay, and the horse-blanket, and a chest-protector, besides, for the horse to wear all the time, to keep the uphill wind off his lungs. We’ve bought the bags of sweepings for the feeding-places, and there’s three dollars and eighty-five cents left.

“Couldn’t the Kind Hearts’ Club have a meeting right away, and vote to send Old Ned’s Mocker back down South by express, now, before he, maybe, dies, so’s he’d be there to meet spring, even if old Ned can’t? Then he’d have time to look up a mate in case his old one has got tired of waiting for him,” she added in a more cheerful tone.

Gray Lady said that, as all the members were present, a special meeting would be in order; and two days later the Mockingbird started for the southern home of one of Gray Lady’s school friends, with a “special” tag on his well-wrapped cage and a bottle of extra food fastened outside.

Oh, the untold misery and waste of this caging and selling of free-born birds! It is only one grade less direct a slaughter than killing them to trim a bonnet. While the sufferings of the bonnet-bird end at once, with its life, those of the caged bird have only begun as the door closes behind him.

A few exceptional cases, where birds in care of those who are both able and willing to make their surroundings endurable, count as nothing against the general condemnation of the practice of caging birds born wild.

Those of us who have known, by experience, in caring for wounded or sick birds, exactly what incessant watchfulness is necessary to keep them alive, realize how impossible it is that this care should be given them by the average purchaser.

Birds born and reared in captivity, like the Canary, are the only ones that real humanity should keep behind bars. There is no more condemnable habit than taking nestlings of any kind, and trying to rear them, unless disaster overtakes the parents.

Nominally, the traffic in caged wild birds has ceased; actually, it has not; nor will it until every bird-lover feels himself responsible for staying the hand that would rob the nest, whether it is that of the ignorant little pickaninny of the South, who climbs up the vine outside the window where you are wintering, and sees, in the four young Mockers, in the nest just under the sill, a prospective dollar; the child at home, who likes to experiment for a few days with pets, and then forgets them; or the wily dealer, who sells secretly what he dares not exhibit. No quarter to any class who make prisoners of the wild, outside of the zoölogical gardens or the few private outdoor aviaries, where the proper conditions exist.

Any free citizen prefers death to loss of liberty, and even the most material mind will, at least, allow this human quality to Citizen Bird, while it proves that he or she who either cages or buys the captive wholly lacks the spiritual quality.

Should we make prisoners of

“The ballad-singers and the Troubadours, The street musicians of the heavenly city, The birds, who make sweet music for us all In our dark hours, as David did for Saul”?

XX MIDWINTER BIRDS

WINTER COMRADES

Plume and go, ye summer folk Fly from Winter’s killing stroke, Bluebird, Sparrow, Thrush, and Swallow, Wild Geese from the marshes follow, Wood-dove from the lonesome hollow Rise and follow South—all follow!

Now I greet ye, hardy tribes, Snowy Owl, and night-black Crow, Starling with your wild halloo; Blue Jay screaming like the wind, In the tree-tops gaunt and thinned; You in summer called “Bob-white” (Voice of far-off fields’ delight). Now among the barnyard brood Fearless, searching for your food; Nuthatch, Snowbird, Chickadee, Downy tapper on the tree; And you twittering Goldfinch drove (Masked in gray) that blithely rove Where the herby pastures show Tables set above the snow: And ye other flocks that ramble, Where the red hop trims the bramble, Or the rowan-berry bright And the scarlet haw invite— Winter comrades, well betide ye, Friendly trunk and hollow hide ye, Hemlock branches interlace, When the Northern Blast gives chase.

—Edith M. Thomas.

These were the hard days for birds and people both, days of sleet and ice, when the snow seemed to chill and bind the trees down, instead of winding lovely draperies about them as it did at first.

Toward the end of January the cedar-berries gave out, and the juicy blackberries of the honeysuckle, that clings to everything that will hold the vines, became watery and poor; most of the seed-stalks of weeds were beaten down, and it was “mighty poor picking for birds,” as Sarah Barnes expressed the matter.

The lunch-counter in Birdland received a fresh supply of food every morning, and yet, sometimes before dark, every grain had been eaten, and the generous lumps of suet picked to shreds. The feeding-stations for the game-birds all had visitors, and the boys, who kept them supplied, saw, in their walks, many winter birds that they never before knew came so near to the cultivated farmland.

Acting on the general idea of feeding and sheltering birds that now seemed to pervade the air of Fair Meadows township, many people scattered food on the roofs of their sheds, and made openings in their corn-stacks, or left a window of the hay-barn ajar, where birds might seek a shelter.

All through the month the resident winter birds were seen at intervals. Of course, there would be many days when no birds would appear, and it would seem as if they had all gone, but let the sun shine, and the least breath of wind blow from the southeast, and they would come out of the near-by shelter where they had been hiding.

The orchard lunch-counter was the one place where, at least, a single bird was always to be found, and, at times, as many as half a dozen different kinds would be seen feeding peaceably together.

Gray Lady kept a list of all the birds that the children reported, and sometimes it was quite a puzzle for her to name a bird, unknown to the discoverer, from the description that was brought of it. For to see the chief points of a bird at a glance is difficult enough in itself, but to put them into exact words seemed sometimes impossible.