THE BIRD STUDY BOOK 



notice the nesting of birds, and the little ones prepar- 

 ing for their flight into the world. There we should 

 find beautiful flowers and waving grain, typical of 

 that spiritual harvest which should be associated in 

 our minds with comfort and peace. 



A Birdless Cemetery. — I visited, not long ago, one 

 of the old-time cemeteries, the pride of a neighbouring 

 city. It was indeed a place of beauty to the eye; but 

 to my mind there is always something flat and insipid 

 about a landscape lacking the music of singing birds. 

 Therefore I looked and listened for my feathered 

 friends. Some English Sparrows flew up from the 

 drive, and I heard the rusty hinge-like notes of a 

 small company of Purple Grackles that were nesting, 

 I suspected, in the pine trees down the slope, but of 

 really cheerful bird life there appeared to be none 

 in this artificially beautified, forty-acre enclosure. 

 There is no reason to suppose that, under normal 

 conditions, birds would shun a cemetery any more 

 than does the traditional graveyard rabbit. 



It was not dread of the dead, such as some mortals 

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