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Transcriber’s Note:
Title page added.


BIRDS

 

A MONTHLY SERIAL

 

ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY

 

DESIGNED TO PROMOTE

 

KNOWLEDGE OF BIRD-LIFE

 


 

VOLUME II.

 


 

CHICAGO
Nature Study Publishing Company


copyright, 1897

by

Nature Study Publishing Co.

chicago.


[Pg 121]

BIRDS.

Illustrated by COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.

 

Vol. II.
No. 4.
OCTOBER.

 

BIRDS IN CAPTIVITY.

It was our intention in this articleto give a number of instancesof a pathetic nature concerningthe sufferings of the variousspecies of birds which it hasbeen, and still is, a habit with manypeople to keep confined in cagestotally inadequate for any other purposethan that of cruelty. The argumentthat man has no moral right todeprive an innocent creature of libertywill always be met with indifferenceby the majority of people, and anappeal to their intelligence andhumanity will rarely prove effective.To capture singing birds for any purposeis, in many states, prohibited bystatute. But the law is violated.Occasionally an example is made ofone or more transgressors, but as arule the officers of the law, whosebusiness it should be to prevent it,manifest no interest whatever in itsexecution. The bird trappers as wellknow that it is against the law, but solong as they are unmolested by thepolice, they will continue the wholesaletrapping. A contemporary recentlysaid: “It seems strange that thisbird-catching industry should increaseso largely simultaneously with thefounding of the Illinois AudubonSociety. The good that that societyhas done in checking the habit ofwearing birds in bonnets, seems tohave been fairly counterbalancedby the increase in the number ofsongsters captured for cage purposes.These trappers choose the nestingseason as most favorable for their work,and every pair of birds they catchmeans the loss of an entire family inthe shape of a set of eggs or a nestfulof young left to perish slowly bystarvation.”

This is the way the trappers proceed.They are nearly all Germans.Bird snaring is a favorite occupationin Germany and the fondness for thecruel work was not left behind by theemigrants. More’s the pity. Thesefellows fairly swarm with their birdlimes and traps among the suburbs,having an eye only to the birds ofbrightest plumage and sweetest song.“They use one of the innocents as abait to lure the others to a prison.”“Two of the trappers,” says one whowatched them, “took their station atthe edge of an open field, skirted by agrowth of willows. Each had twocage traps. The device was dividedinto two parts by wires runninghorizontally and parallel to the planeof the floor. In the lower half of eachcage was a male American Goldfinch.In the roof of the traps were two littlehinged doors, which turned backwardand upward, leaving an opening.Inside the upper compartment of

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