For the friends of birds there are, in cold days of wind and storm,
opportunities of loving service.
In the drama of bird-life the scenes are ever shifting, and struggle for
existence is not always under sun-lighted, genial skies.
It is true that creative love has endowed the birds with facilities for
resisting the havoc of storms. The feathered tribes, nested in chosen
coverts, defy the elements and shake out their plumage in fearless
defiance of tempests before which man stands in dismay.
A little bit of feathered anatomy will sway cheerily on unprotected
twigs, disdaining the shelter close at hand, while the storm beats on
wayside.
The endurance of these creatures of the air may well astonish men, who,
with all their vitality and size, succumb, of necessity, to the warring
elements.
But, in spite of their powers of endurance, the storm-periods are for
the birds bitter intervals of life, when hunger and thirst and cold
combine to sweep them into the vortex of the lost.
It is not the cold, unaccompanied by other influences, which devastates
the ranks of the birds during extreme winter storm-periods, however; it
is, chiefly, the dearth of food.
While the harvest of seeds over the meadows is available the bleak blast
moans about our birds innoxiously; but it is when the feathery
snowflakes cover this well-stocked granary, clinging about the
seed-vessels of weed and flower, and closing it in a frozen locker, or
the ice-storm wraps it in glittering ice, that the lairds are beaten
before the winds, and perish of cold and starvation.
There are few, if any, bird lovers who have not some scene of tragedy to
recount; some memory of storm-periods when the birds flew to the
habitations of men for help, finding no hope but in the fragments cast
away by some human hand.
That more thought is not given to the needs of the birds about our
doors, at such periods, is due more to the prevailing impression that
the birds have the means of providing, even in times of emergency, for
their own needs, than to a disregard of the interests of these little
friends of the air.
Unless we have awakened to pathetic struggle of bird life under some
conditions we are not apt to be aroused to any obligation in the matter
of aiding in providing for birds in seasons of peril.
But it is true, nevertheless, that the little visitor upon our doorsill
who stays with us during the long winter suffers the anguish of cold and
hunger, frequently of starvation, during the periods of intense cold and
storm—anguish which might be prevented by a little thoughtfulness on
man’s part, in casting a trifle of food in sheltered nooks—crumbs from
the table; cracked corn or coarse meal; cracked nuts; a bit of suet, the
latter being best served by being nailed upon some neighboring tree,
high enough to be beyond the reach of any but the intended guests.
By such provision one phase of the tragedy of bird-life would be abated,
and the friendliness of the little strangers developed, to the pleasure
of many bird lovers, who would receive in return for their kindness the
gladness sure to be theirs in watching the feast of the joyous birds.
The day when earth and sky meet in one maze of blinding snow, or in the
mist of rain which freezes where it falls, is hard enough for the birds;
but while there is light there is also a hope of a scanty meal to be
caught somewhere through the swirl of the storm. But, when this hope
fails and darkness lowers into deepening night; when bleak winds rage on
every side; the forests creak and moan; the tormented air sobs and wails
like a tortured soul; when every sound is swept into the cadence of
despair and the outposts of hills are lost in the labyrinth of
tumultuous night, then how bitter is life’s tragedy for the
hunger-racked birds; how marvelous it is that so many little
storm-beaten breasts survive to meet the struggle for existence at the
dawn of a new storm-beaten day.
George Klingle.