BIRDS. 



ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



VOL. II. 



OCTOBER. 



No. 4. 



BIRDS IN CAPTIVITY. 



I 



oil 



'T was our intention in this article 

 to give a number of instances 

 of a pathetic nature concerning 

 the sufferings of the various 

 species of birds which it has 

 been, and still is, a habit with many 

 people to keep confined in cages 

 totally inadequate for any other pur- 

 pose than that of cruelty. The argu- 

 ment that man has no moral right to 

 deprive an innocent creature of liberty 

 will always be met with indifference 

 by the majority of people, and an 

 appeal to their intelligence and 

 humanity will rarely prove effective. 

 To capture singing birds for any pur- 

 pose is, in many states, prohibited by 

 statute. But the law is violated. 

 Occasionally an example is made of 

 one or more transgressors, but as a 

 rule the officers of the law, whose 

 business it should be to prevent it, 

 manifest no interest whatever in its exe- 

 cution. The bird trappers as well 

 know that it is against the law, but so 

 long as they are unmolested by the 

 police, they will continue the whole- 

 sale trapping. A contemporary recently 

 said: "It seems strange that this 

 bird-catching industry should increase 

 so largely simultaneously with the 

 founding of the Illinois Audubon 

 Society. The good that that society 

 has done in checking the habit of 

 wearing birds in bonnets, seems to 

 have been fairly counterbalanced 

 by the increase in the number of 

 songsters captured for cage ourposes. 



These trappers choose the nesting 

 season as most favorable for their work, 

 and every pair of birds they catch 

 means the loss of an entire family in 

 the shape of a set of eggs or a nestful 

 of young left to perish slowly by 

 starvation." 



This is the way the trappers pro- 

 ceed. They are nearly all Germans. 

 Bird snaring is a favorite occupation 

 in Germany and the fondness for the 

 cruel work was not left behind by the 

 emigrants. More's the pity. These 

 fellows fairly swarm with their bird 

 limes and traps among the suburbs, 

 having an eye only to the birds of 

 brightest plumage and sweetest song. 

 " They use one of the innocents as a 

 bait to lure the others to a prison." 

 " Two of the trappers," says one who 

 watched them, " took their station at 

 the edge of an open field, skirted by a 

 growth of willows. Each had two 

 cage traps. The device was divided 

 into two parts by wires running 

 horizontally and parallel to the plane 

 of the floor. In the lower half of each 

 cage was a male American Goldfinch. 

 In the roof of the traps were two little 

 hinged doors, which turned backward 

 and upward, leaving an opening. 

 Inside the upper compartment of the 

 trap, and accessible through the door- 

 way in the roof, was a swinging perch. 

 The traps were placed on stumps 

 among the growth of thistles and dock 

 weed, while the trappers hid behind 

 the trees. The Goldfinches confined 



