Bird Notes and News 



95 



This year a relaxation in rules has been 

 made so as to suit all arrangements for 

 school holidays. Essays may be sent in 

 either before or after the summer holidays ; 

 but if it is desired that they should be 

 written later than August 1st, it is asked that 

 notice to this effect be sent to the Secretary 

 of the Society. Forms for the Essay writing 

 \vill be forwarded in July to schools that have 

 entered ; and schools which omitted to enter 

 but would liJke to compete are invited to 

 apply for the forms. 



Mr. Mattingley, of the Australasian Ornith- 

 ological Society, sends a specimen of a ribbon 

 badge which was issued to 300,000 people 

 in one State alone of Australia on Bird Day, 

 1912. The vast majority of these were 

 schoolchildren, and a larger number will be 

 required this year. Until last January, he 

 writes, each State had its " Gould League 

 of Bird Lovers," and conducted the manage- 

 ment in its own way. Their success was 

 very great. " Now the different Leagues 

 have federated, and we have a huge body of 

 persons, composed mainly of the younger 

 generation of Australasia, working to pro- 

 tect our birds. The sentiment engendered 

 is worth many Acts of Parliament, judging 

 by the effect on our bird-life, which is now 

 protected out of pure love and not for fear 

 of the law." 



The distribution of some thousand nesting- 

 boxes, and of 1,500 cherry and mulberry 

 trees (to be planted as food for birds), to the 

 schools of a Pennsylvanian toMTi, by the State 

 Game Commissioner, has been alluded to in 

 a previous number of Bird Notes and Neios. 

 The Christian Science Monitor (Boston, 

 Mass.) for April 25th, 1913, has a picture of 

 218 children of Lincoln, Nebraska, each 

 with a bird-box. They are members of 

 a Bird-Lovers' Club, and make or help in 



making their own nesting-boxes for their 

 own gardens, and cultivate a proportion of 

 plants and grasses which provide bird- 

 food. 



Bird Day is now legally established in 

 California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, 

 Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, 

 and is also more or less regularly observed 

 in New York, Lidiana, Colorado, Alabama, 

 and Pennsylvania. 



CHILDREN AND BIRDS. 



In his new work " Adventures among 

 Birds," Mr. W. H. Hudson comments on the 

 relations between children and birds pro- 

 duced and indicated by the R.S.P.B. Bird 

 and Tree Competitions. After alluding to 

 various humanizing influences of the day, 

 he wTites : 



" I have another and better reason than 

 the fact of the existence of all these activities 

 for my belief that a change is taking place in 

 the country boy's mind, that his interest and 

 pleasure in the wild bird is growing, and that 

 as it grows he becomes less destructive. 

 A good deal of my time is passed in the vil- 

 lages in different parts of the country ; 

 I make the acquaintance of the children and 

 get into the confidence of many small boys 

 and find out what they do and think and 

 feel about birds, and it is my experience that 

 in recent years something new has come into 

 their minds — a sweeter, humaner feeling 

 about their feathered fellow-creatures. I also 

 take into account the spirit which is revealed 

 in the village school children's essays written 

 for the Bird and Tree Competitions estab- 

 lished by the Royal Society for the Protection 

 of Birds. During the last four or five years 

 I alive had to read many hundreds of these 

 essays, each dealing ^nth one species from 

 the child's own personal observation, and it 

 has proved a very pleasing task to me because 

 so many of the young essayists had put their 

 whole heart into theirs. Their enthusiasm 

 shines, even in the weakest of these com- 

 positions, considered merely as essays, and 

 Ave may imagine that the country boy or 



