88 OUR NATIVE BIRDS 



the potato. What does a man want with a gun, any 

 how, during the close season? It is all right to buy 

 your twelve-year-old boy a gun or a .22 rifle, but see to 

 it that he does not shoot at everything that creeps, 

 runs, or flies ! Boys going about with firearms in towns 

 or in the immediate vicinity of towns are an unmiti- 

 gated nuisance. They do not know any better, but 

 their elders do know better, or they should be taught 

 by the courts. 



A communication which I find in the March number 

 of Recreation of 1899 contains such a sad comment 

 upon the common sense and self control of so many 

 city outing parties that I reproduce it here : 



"Many people visit our trout streams during the 

 summer. All men, boys, and, I am sorry to say, 

 ladies carry .22 rifles. Our visitors are in the coun- 

 try for fun, and when they are not fishing, they must 

 shoot. So our robins, larks, and bluebirds yield their 

 lives to afford a moment's amusement to creatures of a 

 presumedly higher scale. One incident I noticed par- 

 ticularly. I saw a pair of bluebirds building in a hol- 

 low stump, and as often as I passed I looked at them. 

 After a while, five beautiful eggs lay in the nest. At 

 my next visit, I was greeted by the gaping mouths of 

 four baby birds. A short time after, I saw two ladies 

 save the mark shooting .22's near this nest. The 

 next evening I passed, and there beside the stump lay 

 the mother bird with a bullet hole through her body, 

 and in the nest were her four babies, dead of cold and 



