254 Bird - Lore 
“Then, too, the bird don’t always work on the square, as naturally they 
don’t understand property rights and boundaries. They stay in the broken- 
down orchard across the way, and feed on grubs and weed-seeds all the fall 
and in early spring; but, when strawberries and cherries are ripe, my neighbor 
lacking such fruit, they come right down here. 
“Come to facts; just you figure out how much insecticides my spoiled fruit 
would buy, and you will soon see that I don’t owe those birds anything for 
their services. The mistake is, you bird folks are too hot-headed; you seem to 
think that because a critter’s a bird it’s got no faults, just as some folks think 
a policeman’s always honest, and a minister’s shed all his human nature.” 
I stood still, feeling entirely crushed, and presently I said: “I’m sorry that 
you feel as you do, because I was going to ask you to have one of our lectures, 
‘The Birds about Home,’ at one of your Grange Meetings, and perhaps ask 
your neighbors to put up some Bluebird houses, now that so many of the old 
orchards where they nested have been cut down. But, of course, it’s no use 
wasting words, if you don’t care for birds.” 
“That’s where you make the mistake,” he said, laying a kindly, if heavy, 
hand on my shoulder. “You just happened to take hold of the wrong end, as 
far as ’m concerned. I do care for the poor little dickie birds; I set great store 
by them. Why it wouldn’t seem like spring, in spite of the fall rye showing 
green and the swamp maple reddening, if the birds weren’t here to sing sun-up 
and sun-down. I couldn’t sit still, there in that long shed, to milk eight cows, 
and feel natural, without the Phcebe flying in and out overhead, or the Swal- 
lows darting over the pond, yonder. 
“The Robins and Catbirds are darned pesky in some ways, but they do 
make chore time seem shorter, and the Crow Blackbirds are surely good com- 
pany, walking along before and behind when I’m taking long up-hill furrows. 
Now, if you’d said, “I wish you’d lend a hand to help the dickie birds because 
they’re pretty and friendly, and sing better hymns than a church choir, I’d 
have said ‘Amen’ right off. 
“T can spray and pick off bugs, so can anybody; but no government re- 
ports, nor farmers’ institutes, nor agricultural colleges, can tell how to make 
up for a bird’s pretty ways and friendliness. So, if 1 was at your trade, I’d 
stick more to this end of it.” f 
The farmer was right. Let us, without being maudlin, lay a little more 
stress on the uses of beauty and affection. A child should not value or gauge 
his father chiefly by the amount of money he brings home, nor should he be 
taught first to value a beautiful songster by its insect-eating capacity. Our 
standards, as a whole, are becoming pitifully, if necessarily, intensely material. 
Let us, therefore, dwell first upon the undeniable beauty and cheer of the birds 
of the air, and less upon their economic value. M. O. W. 
