Our dooryard friends

Introduction

One who long has lived the intensive life of cities can know little about birds. Indeed, we city folk seldom hear birds, or hear them mentioned, unless it be when we are told that the English sparrows have driven all the other birds out, This perhaps is as likely to be as incorrect as most general statements ; perhaps it is we who have driven out all the other birds, if they have been driven out, or perhaps it is but our way of excusing ourselves for our astounding ignorance about all of the manifestations of life about us. We have dull vision, and grope our way stupidly and purblindly among mysteries and beauties we have not the wit to recognize and enjoy. About all we know of English sparrows is that they are forever quarreling and scuffling in the streets, and we ourselves in that respect are not much beyond the development they have attained.

I can tell a robin or a bluejay, but I should be unable to identify many other members of the bird family. I do know a meadow lark when I see one, because on the golf links in early summer these blithe birds are constantly springing up from one's feet and flying low across the downs with a note of music that might have been swept from the strings of a harp, and one is now and then begging the caddies to respect the nests they so recklessly build in the open fields. And there comes back, too, a recollection of long years since, when a flash of red through the green woods was identified for me as a scarlet tanager. Only the other day I had the amazing adventure of beholding an owl in a tree ; we saw it from the veranda of the Country Club ; and down on Lake Erie, in the winter, I have seen bedraggled eagles sitting cold and disconsolate in the tops of tall trees, waiting for the fishermen to haul their, nets from the ice, and share with them the spoil.

But I am not a naturalist, and cannot undertake to write any sort of critical appreciation of a book that is so explicit about birds as the manuscript of "Our Dooryard Friends" proves to be, and so I am unable to speak in any wise of the scientific value of those observations which Miss Prueser has made among the birds. If I fail to share all of her raptures about nature, perhaps it is because I have been so exclusively occupied with the expressions of man, about whom it becomes more and more difficult to have any sort of rapture, but I can own to a joy in reading the simple and sincere sketches which Miss Prueser has gathered to make this little book. And in reading them I have not been reproached for my lack of knowledge of birds, I have been reproached by my own ignorance of my own land. I was assured, ever since my teachers tried to drum it into my head when I was a little boy, that the valley of the Maumee River was rich in historical interest, but I never knew that there was so much of interest going on in it as Miss Prueser has discovered within a few yards of her own door. And so I have read her pages with interest, and I have had my joy in that little world she creates and in which she seems to move, a little world so curiously remote from the work-a-day world of men with all its striving and its savagery, that one might wish that she had been more discursive and more explicit about it. She writes of it in a plain and straightforward manner, and tells us quite simply, almost naively, all the wonderful things she beholds in it; it becomes a world in which the human interest is entirely subordinated, when it exists at all, to the manifold interests of the inhabitants of that world whose affairs are doubtless quite as important as our own.

BRAND WHITLOCK.

Toledo, Ohio.

PROCLAMATION

It is related that in the early days of Illinois history it was the custom of the leading lawyers to accompany on horseback the judge as he "rode the circuit" journeying from town to town to hold court. On one of these journeys it zvas observed that one of the best known and ablest lawyers of the party had fallen behind and had become separated from his distinguished associates. Inquiry developed the fact that this great lawyer and statesman, noticing as he passed along the country road that a robin's nest had fallen to the ground, bringing wreck and ruin to a tiny home, and vast trouble to a little bird-mother, had dismounted from his horse, gathered up the helpless young birds, placed them in the nest and climbed up into the tree to place this little house with its tender inmates on a more secure foundation out of harm's way. This kindly, humane act performed, the big-hearted lawyer mounted his horse and rode on. Abraham, Lincoln could thus find time to save suffering and administer to the wants of a poor little bird-family ; he became the liberator of a race and the savior of his country. Who shall say that this thoughtful care for the grief -stricken bird-mother and her helpless brood was not a forerunner of that sympathy, devotion and tenderness which have endeared Lincoln to the world ? If he as a boy had robbed birds' nests and taken delight in inflicting pain and suffering on the innocent and defenseless, it is safe to say that as a man he would not have achieved the high place he enjoys in the nation's affections.

Let our boys and girls be taught that it is weak and coivardly to inflict suffering upon birds and dumb animals. Let us by example teach them that it is manly and womanly to -protect the helpless and to love the goody the true and the beautiful. The conservation of bird life and the encouragement of tree planting is more than mere sentiment — it is fast becoming an economic problem of nationwide importance. The unfortunate decimation of bird life has brought a myriad of insect pests which threaten the very life of farm crops and orchards.

It is fitting that in the morning of a new century and a higher civilization the hand of man should guide nature in the restoration of a portion of the primeval forest and the protection of the birds that sing among the branches.

In compliance with authority vested in me by law, I therefore designate April pth, as Arbor and Bird Day, and recommend that it be appropriately observed by the common schools, higher institutions of learning, civic organizations and citizens generally, to the end that the utility and beauty of tree and bird and bud and bloom and song may be more fully understood and appreciated and that the forest foliage may protect the home, adorn the landscape and clothe again the rugged slope of the everlasting hills. Frank B. Willis.

Executive Department,

Office of the Governor,

February ij, 1915.

Contents

PAGE

Preface 15

Tree Sparrows — New Year's Day 17