A man who studies birds is called an ornithologist. Mark Twain, the
amusing yet kind-hearted American writer, says:
"There are fellows who write books about birds and love them so much
that they'll go hungry and tired to find a new kind of bird--and kill
it.
"They are called 'ornithologers.'
"I could have been an 'ornithologer' myself, because I always loved
birds and creatures. And I started out to learn how to be one. I saw a
bird sitting on a dead limb of a high tree, singing away with his head
tilted back and his mouth open--and, before I thought, I fired my gun
at him; his song stopped all suddenly, and he fell from the branch,
limp like a rag, and I ran and picked him up--and he was dead. His
body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and that,
like as if his neck was broke, and there was a white skin over his
eyes, and one drop of red blood sparkled on the side of his
head-and-laws! I couldn't see nothing for the tears."
"I haven't ever murdered no creature since then that warn't doing me
no harm--and I ain't agoing to neither."
A good Scout is generally a good "ornithologer," as Mark Twain calls
him. That is to say, he likes stalking birds and watching all that
they do. He discovers, by watching them, where and how they build
their nests.
He does not, like the ordinary boy, want to go and rob them of their
eggs, but he likes to watch how they hatch out their young and teach
them to feed themselves and to fly. He gets to know every species of
bird by its call and by its way of flying; and he knows which birds
remain all the year round and which only come at certain seasons; and
what kind of food they like best, and how they change their plumage,
what sort of nests they build, where they build them, and what the
eggs are like.
A good many birds are almost dying out in Great Britain, because so
many boys bag all their eggs when they find their nests.
Birds'-nesting is very like big-game shooting--you look out in places
that, as a hunter, you know are likely haunts of the birds you want;
you watch the birds fly in and out and you find the nest. But you do
not then go and destroy the nest and take all the eggs. If you are
actually a collector, take one egg and leave the rest, and, above all,
don't pull the nest about, otherwise the parent birds will desert it,
and all those eggs, which might have developed into jolly young birds
will be wasted.
Far better than taking the eggs is to take a photograph, or to make a
sketch of the hen sitting on her nest, or to make a collection of
pictures of the different kinds of nests built by the different kinds
of birds.
Aberdeen, in Scotland, is supposed to be specially well off for
skylarks for the following reason:
A few years ago there came a very severe gale and snow-storm late in
March, and all the high ground inland was so buried under snow and ice
that the birds were all driven to the Lower land near the coast. The
fields by the seashore were covered with them.
Numbers of people went out to catch them with birdlime, nets, snares,
and guns. Large numbers were taken alive to be 'sent to market' in
London and other towns.
One gentleman found a man selling a big cage full of them. They were
crowded up to a fearful extent, and all fluttering with terror at
their imprisonment, struggling over each other in their frantic desire
to escape. He felt so sorry for them that he bought the whole lot, and
took them to his warehouse, where he was able to give them plenty of
room and food and water.
Then he offered to buy all the larks that were being captured for the
market at market prices. In this way he received over a thousand; and
these he put in a big room, where they had comparative freedom and
plenty of food. It is said that the noise of their singing in the
morning was almost deafening, and crowds of birds used to gather over
the house to hear them.
At last the bad weather passed off, the sun shone out again, and the
fields became green and bright, and then the kind man who had housed
the birds opened the windows of the room and all the birds flew out in
a happy crowd, chirping and singing as they mounted into the bright,
warm air, or fluttered off to the adjoining fields and woods. And
there they built their nests and hatched out their young, so that
to-day the song of the lark is to be heard everywhere round Aberdeen.
* * * * *