SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by MABEL OSGOOD 'WRIGHT 



Address all communications to the Editor of the School Department, National 

 Association of Audubon Societies, 141 Broadway, New York City 



June ; the Month of Song and the Nest 



APRIL and May are the months of promise; with June comes fulfilment. 

 In April and May we are watching for the return of the birds, — those 

 that we know aheady and those that we hope to meet, — but when June 

 comes, and the last migrant BlackpoU Warbler has passed on, expectation 

 ceases and we come to the actual, the two very real things at this time in the 

 bird world being the song and the nest. 



Of the many things in which the feathered brothers may serve as examples 

 to their human kin, nothing is more notable than the fact that the home is built 

 to the sound of music, and that the emotional is not checked by the practical. 

 However, many more people know our familiar birds as singers than as home- 

 builders, and there is a general feeling, even among those who know some- 

 thing of bird-life, that their existence is a mere pastime, wholly free from care. 



A little country girl recently voiced this feeling to me. Vexed at being obliged 

 to help in the annual house-cleaning when she wished to go to the woods for 

 arbutus, she stood pouting, as she gazed longingly out of the door, up the road, 

 where her friends were fast disappearing, and her eyes fell upon a pair of early 

 Robins, apparently playing aerial tag among the apple trees. 



"I wish I could change into a bird," she said, "they don't have one bit of 

 trouble housekeeping or cleaning — just fly about and sing and eat, and when 

 they need a home, they gather up some old grass and sticks and sit right down 

 and don't bother." 



"Ah," I said, "but that is not all, and they do bother a great deal. They not 

 only choose a site and build their home carefully, each according to the tra- 

 ditions of its family, but they keep them as free as possible from dirt, as a care- 

 ful mother would her child's nursery. Suppose, instead of standing there growl- 

 ing, you finish your work as quickly as possible, and so earn time this spring 

 to watch a few birds at their house-building. 



"Then, when they are through with their homes, you can perhaps handle 

 them and understand how much labor it has taken to make them. Four or 

 five such nests will give you a key to them all, and if you are quiet and watch- 

 ful, you can find them all here on the farm. 



" For a composition nest of glue and sticks bracketed against the wall, crawl 

 into the smokehouse fireplace and look up the wide chimney at the Swifts build- 

 ing there. For pure masonry, you have only to watch the Barn Swallows at work 



(135) 



