He gets to know every species of
bird by its call and by its way of flying; and he knows which birds
remain all the year round and which only come at certain seasons; and
what kind of food they like best, and how they change their plumage,
what sort of nests they build, where they build them, and what the
eggs are like.
A good many birds are almost dying out in Great Britain, because so
many boys bag all their eggs when they find their nests.
Birds'-nesting is very like big-game shooting--you look out in places
that, as a hunter, you know are likely haunts of the birds you want;
you watch the birds fly in and out and you find the nest. But you do
not then go and destroy the nest and take all the eggs. If you are
actually a collector, take one egg and leave the rest, and, above all,
don't pull the nest about, otherwise the parent birds will desert it,
and all those eggs, which might have developed into jolly young birds
will be wasted.
Far better than taking the eggs is to take a photograph, or to make a
sketch of the hen sitting on her nest, or to make a collection of
pictures of the different kinds of nests built by the different kinds
of birds.
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