It was our intention in this article to give a number of instances of
a pathetic nature concerning the sufferings of the various species of
birds which it has been, and still is, a habit with many people to keep
confined in cages totally inadequate for any other purpose than that of
cruelty. The argument that man has no moral right to deprive an innocent
creature of liberty will always be met with indifference by the majority
of people, and an appeal to their intelligence and humanity will rarely
prove effective. To capture singing birds for any purpose is, in many
states, prohibited by statute. But the law is violated. Occasionally an
example is made of one or more transgressors, but as a rule the officers
of the law, whose business it should be to prevent it, manifest no
interest whatever in its execution. The bird trappers as well know that
it is against the law, but so long as they are unmolested by the police,
they will continue the wholesale trapping. A contemporary recently said:
"It seems strange that this bird-catching industry should increase so
largely simultaneously with the founding of the Illinois Audubon
Society. The good that that society has done in checking the habit of
wearing birds in bonnets, seems to have been fairly counterbalanced by
the increase in the number of songsters captured for cage purposes.
These trappers choose the nesting season as most favorable for their
work, and every pair of birds they catch means the loss of an entire
family in the shape of a set of eggs or a nestful of young left to
perish slowly by starvation."
This is the way the trappers proceed. They are nearly all Germans. Bird
snaring is a favorite occupation in Germany and the fondness for the
cruel work was not left behind by the emigrants. More's the pity. These
fellows fairly swarm with their bird limes and traps among the suburbs,
having an eye only to the birds of brightest plumage and sweetest song.
"They use one of the innocents as a bait to lure the others to a
prison." "Two of the trappers," says one who watched them, "took their
station at the edge of an open field, skirted by a growth of willows.
Each had two cage traps. The device was divided into two parts by wires
running horizontally and parallel to the plane of the floor. In the
lower half of each cage was a male American Goldfinch. In the roof of
the traps were two little hinged doors, which turned backward and
upward, leaving an opening. Inside the upper compartment of the trap,
and accessible through the doorway in the roof, was a swinging perch.
The traps were placed on stumps among the growth of thistles and dock
weed, while the trappers hid behind the trees. The Goldfinches confined
in the lower sections of the traps had been the victims of the trappers
earlier in the season, and the sight of their familiar haunts, the
sunlight, the breeze, and the swaying willow branches, where so often
they had perched and sung, caused them to flutter about and to utter
pathetically the call note of their days of freedom. It is upon this
yearning for liberty and its manifestation that the bird trappers depend
to secure more victims. No sooner does the piping call go forth from the
golden throats of the little prisoners, than a reply comes from the
thistle tops, far down the field. A moment more and the traps are
surrounded with the black and yellow beauties. The fact that one of
their own kind is within the curious little house which confronts them
seems to send all their timidity to the winds and they fairly fall over
one another in their endeavor to see what it all means. Finally one
finds the doorway in the roof and drops upon the perch within. Instantly
the doors close and a Goldfinch is a prisoner."
Laurence Sterne alone, of sentimental writers, has put in adequate
language something of the feeling that should stir the heart of the
sympathetic, at least, on seeing the unjust confinement of innocent
birds. The Starling, which is the subject of his elevated sentiment,
will appear in an early number of BIRDS. Sterne had just been
soliloquizing somewhat favorably of the Bastile, when a voice, which he
took to be that of a child, complained "it could not get out." "I looked
up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I
went out without further attention. In my return back through the
passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over, and looking up, I
saw it was a Starling hung in a little cage. 'I can't get out, I can't
get out,' said the Starling. I stood looking at the Bird, and to every
person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side,
towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its
captivity. 'I can't get out,' said the Starling. 'God help thee!' said
I, 'but I'll let thee out, cost what it will;' so I turned about the
cage to get the door. It was twisted and double-twisted so fast with
wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I
took both hands to it. The bird flew to the place where I was attempting
its deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his
breast against it as if impatient. 'I fear, poor creature,' said I, 'I
can't set thee at liberty.' 'No,' said the Starling, 'I can't get out,'
'I can't get out,' said the Starling. I vow I never had my affections
more tenderly awakened; or do I remember an incident in my life where
the dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so
suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune
to Nature were they chanted, that disguise thyself as thou wilt, still,
'Slavery,' said I, 'still thou art a bitter draught; and though
thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less
bitter on that account. No, thou thrice sweet and gracious goddess
liberty, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till nature
herself shall change; no tint of woods can spot thy snowy mantle.'"
The bird in his cage pursued Sterne into his room, where he composed
his apostrophe to liberty. It would be well indeed, if a sentiment
could be aroused which would prohibit absolutely the caging of birds,
as well as their wanton destruction, and if the children are taught that
"tenderness which is the charm of youth," another generation will see it
accomplished.