Vermont Bird Club 15 



Did you ever stop to think how much sweetness would be lost to 

 the landscape if the feathered songsters were eliminated from it? This 

 never came to me very forcibly until I visited one of the loveliest spots 

 on earth and realized that somehow, in spite of all its marvelous love- 

 liness to the eye, it was dumb and lacking in some vital respect. At 

 last it came to me, this place lacks but one thing to make it almost an 

 earthly paradise, and that real thing is birds. 



Down there I saw the. beauties of the bluest of skies, a verdure 

 of surpassing loveliness and its tropical vivid colored waters, constantly 

 changing from pale blue to green and sapphire colors that artists can- 

 not do justice to, but for hours and even days at a time not a single 

 song came from a bird's throat. It is difficult to quite describe the 

 sense of sadness, almost desolation, which this birdless paradise 

 brought to me. This so troubled me that I began to inquire into the 

 reason, and was told that song birds had become practically extinct 

 by natives killing and trapping them in every conceivable way. There 

 are laws now for their protection, but the mischief has been done and 

 with the small number of song birds left, it will be years before they 

 will multiply sufficiently to repopulate the woods and fields to anything 

 like the extent of bird life we enjoy in the United States. 



I was told the pretty little yellow banana birds are increasing quite 

 fast, also the sugar bird. I saw only one mocking bird in my three 

 months' stay, where they used to be plentiful, I was told. An Ameri- 

 can going into a country where bird life has been reduced almost to 

 the vanishing point, naturally compels one to ask what do the birds 

 give us in return for the mere chance to live? They ask so little from 

 us in exchange for their unstinted outpouring of friendly song. God 

 has made all things beautiful and I think it must please Him when 

 He sees us love, protect and admire them. 



"PITTY BABE" (MERULA MIGRATORIA) 



Cora G. B. Field. Rutland 



Some of us are born to responsibility; some achieve responsibili- 

 ties, and some have robins presented to us. 



Significant events often come unheralded; sauntering into our 

 lives in the most casual manner, and incognito; and when in early 



