- jays, and flickers, who stay the year round, and the
chickadees, nuthatches, downy and hairy woodpeckers, and juncos, who come in autumn to spend the winter, and you have my bird family, a wonderful family, of musicians, of workmen, of homemakers—fathers and mothers and children.
To me the ways of birds are more entertaining than the best play I have ever attended. They enact real life, not make-believes. Then, too, what music can be compared to the sunrise and sunset concerts of birds in springtime and in early summer? To know each singer by name adds much to the enjoyment.
The ways of birds are also wonderful, past finding out. Who can explain how they make their nests so pretty, when the only tools they have are beak and feet? Then, how gingerly they hide their nests, some with dainty curtains of leaves, others by blending colors! To find a bird's nest always fills me with reverence. It is a little home, a sacred place to its owners. It shall be sacred to me. The mother-wit and father-wisdom that birds show in rearing their young and in protecting them from harm makes me believe that they do think and plan and reason out things much as we human beings do. The most wonderful thing about birds is the long journey that so many of them make every year, generally with several babies only a few months old in the family.
It has been proved that birds will return year after year to the same orchard, garden, yard, or porch. I
