Bird lore - Project Puffin

The Audubon Societies 339
Bluebirds, and others for Purple Martins. There were several squirrel-boxes
made, five feeding-stations, and a bird-bath for the schoolyard.
The bird-bath is about 3^ feet high. It is made from cedar bark. The
basin is 14 inches in diameter.
On May 20 we found a dead Canadian Warbler. Others were seen after
that. We looked in a bird-book about Warblers, and found there that the
Canadian Warbler answered the description of this bird. We hope to see some
drinking from our bird-bath when they are journeying past.
The fifth and sixth grades have been watching young birds, especially
Robins and Flickers, learning to fly. It reminds you of Phoebe Cary's poem
'Don't Give Up.'
Two bird-charts have been made. On one we pasted the pictures of the
birds as we saw them. Cardinals, Cedar Waxwings, Wrens, Robins, Blue
Jays, Warblers, and others were seen. The other chart is made up of three
lists, one for the date, one for the name of the finder, and one for the name of
the bird. They are now at the Civic Exposition in Philadelphia.
PuSEY (Age 10 years). Sixth Grade.
—
Margaret
[It is especially interesting to hear of charts being made in sixth-grade work. It is
not only valuable to have charts to place on exhibit, but also to keep in the schoolroom
for comparison from year to year. The main difficulty with much of our bird-work, both
elementary and advanced, is that observers are not willing to go to the trouble of keeping
careful records of what they see and hear. Form the habit early of setting down in
clear, accurate form a record of all that is seen or heard in the field. Sometime you will
have a set of records of great value to which others as well as yourself can refer.—A. H.W.]
THE ENGLISH SPARROW
As everyone always seems to be running down the English Sparrow, I
think it is time somebody said some nice things of it.
Let us first consider the fact that if this bird had not been very much
needed by us it never would have been imported here. This took place in
Brooklyn, New York, in 1851-1852.
The Enghsh Sparrow rears its young by the half-dozen in all sorts of
places. It does not make any difference to it whether it has a palace or a shed
for its home, and it always makes the best of it even if it is a shed, and this
shows that it is not a fault finding bird but is happy and satisfied in any
surroundings.
Although I will have to admit that it does a great deal of damage by eating
so much grain, it overbalances this by eating millions of ants' eggs and killing
large quantities of insects.
Although it does not sing as sweetly as the Song Sparrow, it certainly is a
pleasure to watch a flock of English Sparrows in winter, when our other bird
friends have left us, and the ground is covered with ice and snow.
I think we should all admire the bravery of these little feathered folk, for