30 OUR NATIVE BIRDS 



Let us have bird islands wherever conditions make it 

 possible ! 



Almost every farmer and land owner possesses small 

 areas which cannot be utilized for agricultural purposes. 

 Plant these waste places with shrubs, trees, and vines 

 suitable to the locality. Summer birds will nest in 

 these isolated woods, and migrants and winter residents 

 will gladly resort to them for food and protection. I 

 have known a large flock of quails to make their home 

 in a copse of small trees, shrubs, and dead flower stalks 

 and grasses. This natural shelter extended a few 

 hundred yards along a meandering prairie stream in 

 Minnesota. The quails could not be driven out of it. 

 If you want a place where your boy may hunt rabbits, 

 he will find them in such waste-land shelter. 



Rural Schools and Nature. If the windows and doors 

 of many country schoolhouses did not so much suggest 

 the structure in which the worthy Ichabod Crane offici- 

 ated, a stranger would undoubtedly mistake these cor- 

 ner shanties for township jails or some kind of penal, 

 sheds or almshouses. The dilapidated appearance of the 

 jail and its desolate surroundings he might interpret as 

 intended to accentuate the punishment of the culprit or 

 to symbolize the lack of beauty and harmony in his 

 mind and morals. I cannot imagine that, without see- 

 ing the children, the teacher, or the school furniture, he 

 could possibly hit upon the idea that these are the 

 places where wealthy, intelligent, and practical com- 

 munities compel their children to spend one-fifth of the 

 waking hours of their youth, and that they would 



