Vol. XXn DuTCHER, Report of Committee on Bird Protection. I07 



1903 J ^ ■ I 



touch and establish working relations with the Superintendent of 

 Public Instruction, to the end that educational bird leaflets may be 

 distributed among the teachers, who will have them read to or 

 distributed among the pupils. The seed thus sown among the 

 children will bear fruit of love for nature that will affect the parent 

 and the home. 



Fourth. — Another activity of the Audubon Societies should be 

 to exact strict conformity to the bird laws of the State, not by 

 prosecutions in their own name, but by securing legal evidence of 

 violations of bird laws that come under their notice and furnishing 

 it to the legally constituted authorities, usually the game commis- 

 sioners, for use in prosecutions. All such violations as killing 

 protected birds by pseudo sportsmen, wantonly for sport or 

 practice, by boys who rob and destroy nests, or kill birds with 

 catapult or airgun, by the foreign element who imagine that liberty 

 means license, by all who engage in the barbarous practice of what 

 is known as side shoots, and by the pot hunter who kills protected 

 birds and sends them to market where the dealers may keep them 

 in cold storage for future use; by the plume hunters who shoot 

 the breeding birds that the devotees of fashion may be pampered 

 at the price of suffering and cruelty. 



In every section of the country may be found large and flourish- 

 ing organizations of women, banded together for mutual improve- 

 ment. These women's clubs can be made powerful auxiliaries and 

 helpers of the Audubon movement if the matter is brought to their 

 notice in a reasonable and intelligent manner. On numerous 

 important occasions during the past year a consideration of the 

 Audubon movement has formed one of the subjects of debate 

 by conventions of women's clubs. If the club women of America 

 frown upon the use of birds' plumage for millinery ornaments very 

 much ground will have been gained for the cause. 



That it is necessary to watch the markets and millinery establish- 

 ments at the present time is only too well known. Very recently 

 nearly 80,000 Snow Buntings were found by a State game warden 

 in a cold storage house in one of the larger eastern cities, and 

 were identified by a trained ornithologist. The writer of this 

 report has recently seen offered for sa e by one of the leading 

 department stores in New York such valuable birds as Flickers 



