8 OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
The mother birds in our yard are hke those human 
mothers in India. You have only to watch them when 
a cat comes prowling around to see how very much like 
human mothers they are. They scream and dart about 
in fright, and if you go near they will fly not from you, 
but toward the cat. They are asking you for help. 
Birds near your house soon learn to know the family 
if every one is kind to them, when they have once 
learned that you are their friend. They will allow you 
to call while they are eating their meals, or to watch 
them while nest-building, although they may be almost 
within reach of your hand. They will even wait around 
the door for you to shake the tablecloth after dinner, or 
to throw out the contents of the crumb-pan, hopping 
about at your feet without a thought of fear. 
We never can learn all there is to know about birds. 
We can know only a little about them if we study them 
all our lives. 
There is a great professor in a California university 
who has been trying all his life to get acquainted with 
fishes, and yet he says he has much more to learn about 
them. Very little people, like birds and fishes and 
insects, can interest very great men, and we often see 
the greatest men the kindest to small creatures. 
We speak of birds in this book as “people,” because 
they seem very near tous. They are beings who think 
and plan and love, and who know what it is to be sorry 
or glad, just like ourselves. 
