"I am so sorry," wrote a little girl from Tarrytown, N. Y., to the
editor of BIRDS AND ALL NATURE, "not to find in your magazine any more
the bird-talks to the little folks. I used to read them with so much
interest. Are there to be no more of them?"
Other little folks have written to the editor in much the same strain,
so that this month the paroquet will speak for himself.
"From my photograph," he says; "you will notice that I am fond of gay
dress, green, blue, yellow, orange-chrome, and red being my favorite
colors. From my brilliant coat you would judge me to be a tropical
bird, but I'm not. I was born and raised in the United States, as was
my family, therefore I am an American citizen.
"In appearance I greatly resemble my cousin, the glib-tongued parrot,
but for some reason, though my tongue is thick and short like his,
and my bill as charmingly curved, I cannot talk--that is, not to be
understood by the human family, I mean, for among ourselves we keep up
a very lively conversation, in very loud tones--a mark we think, as do
some other folk, of good breeding. On the other hand there are people
unreasonable enough not to like it, and they say we 'scream' and that
our notes are 'ear-splitting' and that, though we are beautiful to
look upon and extremely docile, our voices render us undesirable as
cage birds or pets. The idea! As though we do not consider that very
fortunate!--for a cage is a prison, no matter if the bars are gilded.
For my part I prefer to be free even if I do have to hustle for a
living and, between you and me, I think that a bird that can screech
and doesn't screech when shut up in a little cage doesn't deserve to
live. He ought to be killed and stuffed and set up in a museum for
people to gape at. Don't you think so, too?
"It is a great pity, but we paroquets are fast being exterminated.
In some regions, where less than twenty-five years ago we were very
plentiful, not a paroquet is now to be seen. We were once quite common
in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and other parts of the
United States. We are now to be found, in diminished numbers, in remote
localities only of the lower Mississippi Valley and the Gulf States and
in some regions of Florida. To escape from our enemy, the plume-hunter,
we make our homes in practically uninhabitable regions. That is a long
word for you little folks, but spell it out slowly, as I did, and you
will understand what it means.
"Our nesting-time is during February and March. Then colonies of us
paroquets, sometimes numbering a thousand, flock to a cypress swamp and
build our flimsy nests in forks of trees, near the end of a slender,
horizontal branch. Often there are fifty nests in one small tree, each
containing from four to five pretty, greenish-white eggs. It is a
good thing we build our nests in wild and unsettled places, for they
are so flimsy that the eggs are plainly visible from beneath. What a
temptation to the bad boy they would be, and to the bad man, also! Some
paroquets, however, choose a hollow tree in which to deposit their eggs.
"Well, I have told you about all I know of myself and family, so will
close by reciting in my very loudest and prettiest screech, so that all
the neighborhood may hear, a few lines about a Mr. Macaw who was silly
enough, after escaping from a cage, to return to it. He is a cousin
of mine, a _distant_ cousin, for he was born in South America; but he
wears the same colored coat and vest as I do, his tongue is just as
thick, and his bill curves like a parrot's, also: