30 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
The Feast of All Birds’ Day 
All over Northamptonshire, in Eng¬ 
land, this winter, people gave and are 
still giving Christmas parties for the 
birds. Irene Osgood, an English au¬ 
thoress, was the mother of the idea, 
the carrying out of which was intrusted 
to an association of young people in¬ 
terested in birds, called the Uncle Dick 
Society and numbering between 3.000 
and 4,000 members. Certain trees, 
which the birds soon learned to frequent, 
had affixed to their branches meat bones 
and cocoanuts cut in two; underneath 
was placed a shallow dish of water, and 
strewn around was an abundance of 
small seeds. The water and the sgeds 
are now replenished daily. 
Hundreds and, in some cases, thou¬ 
sands of birds congregate. Starlings 
and sparrows are particularly aggressive, 
but there is enough for all. The sight 
of these beautiful creatures gathering 
and conversing over the unexpected 
largess well repays the Society for its 
trouble. 
Here is an idea for the children of 
Wisconsin and Illinois, and especially 
the readers of Wayside. How much 
more fun it is to feed the birds than 
to slaughter them! And if we must be 
practical and commercial in all we do, 
how much better it is for the farmer 
and for the country to protect insect 
destroyers than to kill them off! 
The Crime of The Butcher Bird 
Ornithologists say that Prospect park 
in Brooklyn is right on the north and 
south bird route, the Cincinnati Times- 
Star’s New York correspondent says. 
Because of that fact—and because it is 
protected from every one but the lawless 
Italians—it ordinarily contains a greater 
variety of bird life than any other sim¬ 
ilar park in the country, perhaps. 
Thirty varieties have often been counted 
*/ 
there of a morning. It was only the 
other day that a tragedy of the feath-. 
ered world was reported. A hermit 
thrush—rarest of all song birds—had 
been murdered by the shrike, or butcher 
bird, and his soft little body impaled 
upon a thorn. The guardians of the 
park were ordered to kill the shrike 
on sight. “We liked him while he con¬ 
fined himself to a diet of English spar¬ 
rows,” said the superintendent, “but 
lie’s like the other foreigners against 
wliome we contend here; a very little 
liberty goes to his head.” 
He walked on as he spoke. On a lit¬ 
tle patch of green sward half a dozen 
European starlings were bobbing about. 
They had been brought to this country 
by a rich New Yorker not long ago and 
placed on his Staten island estat'e. 
They look like blackbirds, except that 
their tails are short and their bills are 
brilliantly yellow. On a bench by the 
walk a man sat, leaning forward, watch¬ 
ing them. The superintendent spoke to 
him. ‘Bo you know what they are?” 
he asked. 
“Mein Gott, yes,” said the man, j 
never changing his pose. “In thirty 
years I haf not seen them—not since 
the day I ran from mein fader’s house 
in Germany to seek mein fortune. 
«/ 
That day I heard them sing—” 
He put his head in his hands and 
burst into tears. 
