What the Bird Club Can Do for the Town 



Bv ERNEST HAROLD BAYNES, Cornish, N. H. 



IT IS hardly surprising that bird clubs organized to do active work for the 

 birds should be a good thing for the birds; what is surprising, to the 

 novice at least, is the seemingly infinite variety of ways in which such 

 clubs benefit the people who organize them and the towns in which they are 

 organized. 



The writer knows of at least three bird clubs which have provided a rational, 

 delightful, up-to-date, inexpensive, and all-the-year-round hobby for prac- 

 tically everybody in their respective towns. He visited one of these towns on a 

 cold morning last winter and, if there was one thing which struck him more 

 than the many evidences of hospitality to the birds, it was the fact that the 

 hosts themselves were having quite as much fun as their feathered guests. 

 For example, in one yard a red-cheeked baby was sitting in a baby-carriage, 

 while the rest of the family were using their ingenuity to get a photograph of 

 a well-fed, patient Pine Grosbeak which had perched quite fearlessly on the 

 baby's cap. 



Further up the street, an elderly gentleman stood on his well-swept door- 

 step, playing with a Red-breasted Nuthatch, which he and his wife had tamed 

 until it would eat from their hands. A few minutes later, a band of school 

 children came trudging along with their books, and, on being asked if they 

 were not making a rather early start, they explained that they were going first 

 to the "bird sanctuary" to feed the birds. The writer went with them to a 

 little grove just off the main street, and found the birds sitting about in the 

 trees awaiting the coming of their little hosts. The latter sat down upon the 

 trampled snow which formed the feeding-ground, and as they tossed from their 

 pockets, seeds, bread crumbs and broken nuts, dowm came the Redpolls, 

 and Pine Grosbeaks and Chickadees and Nuthatches, until the children were 

 the center of a circle of interested, appreciative, and, let us hope, grateful 

 guests. It was bitter cold, but, after throwing down the food, the youngsters 

 were very quiet for fear of disturbing the birds. One or two of the smaller ones, 

 however, simply could not resist a very strong inclination to pull the sleeves 

 of their jackets over their mittens and to wiggle their toes occasionally, and 

 it was very amusing to observe the frowns of the older members of the party, 

 who thus by silent censure sought to restrain their more restless companions. 



By and by the writer went back to call on the old gentleman he had seen 

 playing with the Nuthatch. He stated that, until the bird club had been organ- 

 ized three years ago, he never realized what he had been missing all his life. 

 He said that he got more fun out of taking care of the birds than out of any 

 other form of amusement which had ever been available to him, and that, 

 while he had never studied birds before, he knew practically all the winter 

 birds, because, when feeding, they came so near that he could see them well. 



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