Part 8

“Very true, but so is a bat, and, as you know, a bat has fur and looks very like a mouse, and a bird does not.

“Ah, you give it up. Very well, listen and remember. A bird is the only animal which has feathers! With his hollow bones filled with buoyant, warm air, and covered with these strong pinions, he rows through the air, as we row a boat through the water with the oars, balancing himself with these wings, also steering himself with them and with his tail made of stiff feathers and shaped to his particular need, while with small feathers laid close, overlapping each other like shingles, and bedded on an under-coat of down, he is clothed and protected from heat, cold, and wet.

“The eye of the bird is different from ours, for it magnifies and makes objects appear much larger to it than they do to us. Also, while with other animals each group has practically the same kind of feet or beaks, birds have these two features built on widely different plans, so that when you have learned to know the common birds by name and are really studying bird-life, you will find that you must be guided to the orders in which they belong often by their beaks and feet.

“Barnyard Ducks, as you know, have webbed toes for swimming, and flat bills to aid them in shovelling their natural food from the mud.

“Birds of prey, like the Hawks and Owls, have strong hooked beaks and powerful talons or claws, for seizing and tearing the small animals upon which they feed.

“The Woodpeckers (all but one) have two front and two hind toes; these help them grasp the tree bark firmly as they rest, while they have strong-cutting, chisel-like beaks, which they also use for tapping or drumming their rolling love-songs.

“While the insect-eating song-birds have more or less slender bills and four toes, three in front and one behind, for perching crosswise on small branches, the seed-eating songsters, such as Sparrows, have similar feet, but short, stout, cone-shaped bills for cracking seeds and small nuts.

“By this you can see that in spite of the fact that all birds wear feathers, and have wings, a tail, beak, and a pair of legs, they may still be very different from each other.

“A Turkey Gobbler doesn’t look much like a Robin, nor a Goose like a Swallow, yet they are all four birds! They all four bring forth their young from eggs; but the little Turkeys and Goslings are covered with feathers when they peep out of the shell and are able to walk, while the young Robins and Swallows are at first blind, naked, and helpless; so here again you can see that there is something special to be learned about every bird that flies or swims.”

“Chickadee-dee-dee! Can’t you tell them something about me?” said this dear little bird, flitting about one of the open windows and clinging upside down to the blind slats that were bare of paint, like either a Woodpecker, or, as Tommy Todd remarked, “the man in the circus.”

“The little bird peeping in the window and calling his name reminds me of a pretty poem about him,” said Gray Lady. “I will repeat it to you and write it on the board so that you can copy it in your books, and then some of you may like to learn it to surprise Miss Wilde on another rainy Friday.”

A LITTLE MINISTER

I know a little minister who has a big degree; Just like a long-tailed kite he flies his D.D.D.D.D. His pulpit is old-fashioned, though made out of growing pine; His great-grandfather preached in it, in days of Auld lang syne.

Sometimes this little minister forgets his parson’s airs: I saw him turn a somersault right on the pulpit stairs; And once, in his old meeting-house, he flew into the steeple, And rang a merry chime of bells, to call the feathered people.

He has a tiny helpmeet, too, who wears a gown and cap, And is so very wide-awake, she seldom takes a nap. She preaches, also, sermonettes, with headlets one, two, three, In singing monosyllables beginning each with D.

But O her little minister, she does almost adore: I’ve heard her call her sweet D.D. full twenty times or more. And his pet polysyllable—why, did you hear it never? He calls her Phe-be B, so dear, I’d listen on forever.

Now if there is a Bright Eyes small who’d like to go with me, And on his cautious tiptoes ten, creep softly to a tree, I’ll coax this little minister to quit his leafy perch, And show this little boy or girl the way to go to church;

And where his cosy parsonage is hidden in the trees, And how in summer it is full of little D.D.D.’s. And if Bright Eyes will prick his ears, he’ll hear the titmice say, “Good morning,” which, in Chickadese is always “Day, day, day.”

—Ella Gilbert Ives.

“Now that I have answered my own question, there was another that one of you asked, or rather a pair of questions. Why do some birds go away in autumn, and why do they come back? It is very important to know the answers to these, if we want to really understand about the lives of birds and the trials and dangers they undergo.

The Bird Year and the Migration

“People who think of birds at all know that they are not equally plentiful at all times of the year, but that they have their seasons of coming and disappearing, as the flowers have, though not for exactly the same reason.

“We are accustomed to see the plants send up shoots through the bare ground every spring, unfold their leaves and blossoms, and, finally, after perfecting seed, wither away again at the touch of frost.

“Of these plants, as well as some large trees, a few are more hardy than others, like the ground-pine, laurel, and wintergreen, and are able to hold their leaves through very cold weather, and we call them evergreens.

“You notice that the birds appear in spring even before the pussy-willows bud out, and that every morning when you wake, the music outside the window and down among the alders on the meadow border is growing louder, until by the time the apple trees are in bloom there seems to be a bird for every tree, bush, and tuft of sedgegrass.

“By the time the timothy is cut and rye harvested, you do not hear so great a variety of song. The Robin, Song Sparrow, House Wren, and Meadowlark are still in good voice, and an occasional Catbird, but the Bobolink has dropped out, and the Brown Thrasher no longer tells the farmer how to plant his corn: ‘Drop it, drop it, cover it up, hoe it, hoe it;’ and very wise he is, too, for the corn is all planted.

“Later still, when the stacked cornstalks fill the fields with their wigwams, like Indian encampments, the pumpkins are gathered in golden heaps, and the smoke of burning leaves and brush pervades the air, you hear very few bird songs, for many birds have either dropped silently out of sight or collected in huge flocks, like the Swallow, swept by, and disappeared in the clouds, while others, like the Purple Grackle or Common Crow-Blackbird,—walk over the stubble and cover the trees, making such a creaking, crackling noise that one would surely think that their wings as well as voices were rusty and needed oiling.

“What has become of the birds? Where do they go when they disappear?