2l6 



Bird - Lore 



A Bi-Monthly Magazine 

 Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Contributing Editor, MABELOSGOOD WRIGHT 



Published by D. APPLETON & CO. 



Vol. XVII Published June 1,1915 No. 3 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 



Price in the United States. Canada and Mexico, twenty cents 

 a nainber, one dollar a year, postage paid. 



COPYRIGHTED, 1915, BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Bird-Lore's Motto: 

 A Bird in the Bush Is Worth Two in the Hand 



The history of our relations to birds 

 during the past thirty-odd years has been 

 marked by several more or less well-defined 

 stages of development. 



The first, and beyond question the 

 most important and far-reaching of these 

 stages, was the formation, in 1883, of the 

 American Ornithologists' Union. Spring- 

 ing from the Nuttall Ornithological Club 

 of Cambridge the Union, with its wider 

 field of membership and activities, in- 

 augurated a number of movements, each 

 one of which has had and continues to 

 have a profound influence on bird students 

 and birds in America. 



Its Committee on Classification and 

 Nomenclature gave us the 'Check-List' 

 of North American Birds which, since 

 its appearance in 1886, has been our 

 standard; its Committee on Bird Protec- 

 tion was the originating force and back- 

 bone of the Audubon Society movement, 

 and its Committee on Distribution and 

 Migration became, a short time after its 

 formation, that Division of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture which 

 we now know as the Biological Survey. 



The studies, first of the A. O. U. Com- 

 mittee and later of the Biological Survey, 

 of the migration of North American 

 Birds, required the cooperation of ob- 

 servers throughout the country; and the 

 call , for assistance, which was issued 

 through the press and in other ways, 

 doubtless did more to advance the science 

 of ornithology in America than any other 



act of the Union. Through it, many 

 isolated workers were brought into com- 

 munication with the leading ornitholo- 

 gists of the day. This was the beginning 

 of the Epoch of Popular Bird Study. A 

 demand arose for textbooks, and, in sup- 

 plying them, publishers widely advertised 

 the subject with which they dealt. 



The practical difficulty of identifying 

 the bird in the bush being now in a large 

 measure simplified, interest in birds 

 increased with corresponding rapidity. 

 In 1896 it lead to the inauguration of the 

 second Audubon movement through the 

 formation of state societies, the first one 

 being organized in Massachusetts. This, 

 in turn, resulted in the establishment of 

 the National Association of Audubon 

 Societies, which has now become the most 

 powerful existing body in protecting 

 birds and spreading a knowledge of their 

 value to man. 



All these factors, American Ornitholo- 

 gists' Union, popular bird-books and 

 lectures, States and National Audubon 

 Societies, have worked together to make 

 bird students. At first scattered here and 

 there, it was unusual to find more than 

 one or two in the same neighborhood; but 

 now, in certain favored sections, they are 

 becoming more numerous. Community of 

 interest draws them together, and shortly 

 we have a Bird Club! 



What the individual could not do the 

 club can. If it is the natural, logical out- 

 come of a slowly growing local interest in 

 birds, its formation should mean the 

 introduction of Citizen Bird into town or 

 village life. Already we have had several 

 notable illustrations of what such an 

 introduction implies. The cases in mind 

 were by no means exceptional. The 

 means employed ma}' be repeated any- 

 where. They are, in fact, too successful 

 not to be repeated by other and perhaps 

 as yet unorganized bird-clubs; and, as we 

 hear of the birth of club after club and 

 realize what part they may play in com- 

 munity life, we feel that this movement 

 will in due time take its place among the 

 most important factors in developing 

 proper relation? between bird and man. 



