Homeland and the Birds 407 



This mother made her garden in the between times, when her fingers were 

 cramped with knitting and her eyes too full to see the needle's eye. While as 

 to that dreaded "across the river" crowd, they fell and kept away after one 

 experience with an irate little woman who was feeding the Quail as a lure to 

 a winter shelter of cornstalks, set up with her own hands on the wood-lot 

 edge. The poachers, finding to their cost that at least when it comes to keep- 

 ing faith with a son at war, the most gentle "female of the species is more 

 deadly than the male." 



All this is a lengthy text to a very short sermon that I would preach to 

 my fellow workers for the preservation of the Homeland of the men and women 

 who have gone forth; that on their return they may find it the land of joy, 

 beauty and promise as it lives in their memory. Most especially do I make a 

 plea for the bird and its preservation and the trees that give it shelter. 



Very few person in general understand the double menace to bird-life that 

 is coming with the approach of the winter of igiS-ig^the withdrawal of 

 many game-wardens (who were also the chief legal protectors of song-birds) 

 from the field and the very great cost and difficulty of obtaining suitable 

 material for the feeding of our winter-residents or visitors. 



Coupled with these two dangers may return that of last year, when the 

 below-zero winter drove a starving horde of birds of prey from the north, the 

 Great Horned Owl to feed on the game-birds, and the Northern Shrike to prac- 

 tise, even in the confines of Birdcraft Sanctuary, his butcher-bird habits, that 

 purely sentimental bird-lovers seek to deny. 



The money, such as it is, that allows the Fish and Game Commission 

 to be efficient here in Connecticut, for example, comes from the licenses of 

 hunters, a class of men almost wholly drawn heretofore from those of draft 

 age, who either are or will be absent, and I must suppose that the same is the 

 case in the majority of states. Also, already, in several states, protective laws 

 are trembling in the legislative balance and pretended sportsmen who are 

 poorly disguised pot-hunters at heart, are whimpering for the "right to 

 increase the food-supply" by literally killing the source of all future game- 

 bird life in the same way as the Passenger Pigeon was slaughtered. 



Federal migratory bird-protection is now a law, as well as the Enabling Act, 

 but who shall see that these are live and not dead measures? 



We, the people to whom circumstances entrust the care and conservation of 

 the Homeland of the United States of America, the trust left us by our soldier boys, 

 should do this work, not in the place of other necessary war requirements, but as 

 a mentally necessary rest from them. 



The tendency among many ardent patriots is to rush to something newly 

 organized, if it particularly appeals to their craving for the heroic, rather than 

 to give a little time to the keeping up of old, well-considered and time-tried 

 institutions. 



"What can I do?" you ask, and "How shall we do it?" 



