4 Massachusetts Audubon Society 



more good in five montlis than people often do in as many years. We 

 shall try harder than ever to help the birds on their return. 



Many of the children have feeding tables for the birds now here. 

 Quite a number of birds were frozen to death during the severe cold. 

 Last summer we raised over fifty injured and orphaned birds and still 

 have two robins. We gave our summer vacation to the birds. I would 

 like nothing better than to work with them all the time. 



We write this about our vireo that you may see how social and lovable 

 a bird he was. He was the most intelligent bird that we have lived with. 



PRIZE ESSAY. 



Selected from several excellent prize-winners in a Melrose School compe- 

 tition. The writer is a sixth grade pupil. 



One warm night in May, Mother, Daddy and I had just returned 

 from a wajk and were in front of our house, when we heard a feeble 

 chirp coming from the direction of the tree in front of the house. 



We hastened to the tree and found a small bird hopping helplessly 

 around. 



Daddy feared a prowling cat might catch the bird, so he went to- 

 ward the bird with the intention of restoring it to the nest in the tree, 

 for we believed the young bird had fallen from the nest. 



As Daddy approached the bird a shrill call rang out in the air, and 

 two large birds swooped down, and would not, for the life of them let 

 Dad touch the young one. 



They circled round and round the little one, uttering cries and 

 screeches all the while. 



At last we concluded that the two larger birds were teaching their 

 young one to fly, so we entered the house. 



One spring I fashioned a box into a rude bird house and set it on a 

 fork of the tree in our "park." 



Our "park" is a place Dad cut free of bushes under a small oak tree. 



I also set a board across the limb of a tree, and nailed it there. This 

 was for me to put crumbs and tiny bits of meat on, together with small 

 pieces of suet hanging from the branches by means of a piece of string. 



I hoped some birds might soon inhabit the place. 



Not long afterward we were overjoyed when a family of robins 

 established themselves in the bird house. 



They were "newlyweds," I guess, for they were aAtvays together, 

 blithely chirping back and forth to one another. 



At last what we had always wanted came. The baby robins! 



We had been away when the eggs were laid so that the morning after 

 we came home we were a good deal surprised when the birds seemed to 

 pop right out, "all of a sudden," as the saying goes. 



I watched them very much and occasionally brought a worm to them. 



Taking the worm, I would dangle it over their heads laughing in my 

 sleeve at the way they would open their beaks and stretch their thin necks 

 to get the worm. 



