od--
Some of us call it longing,
And others call it God.
W. H. Carruth.

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JULY

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BIRDS IN A CITY

We frequently hear people say that if only they lived in the country they
would take up the study of birds with great interest, but that a city life
prevented any nature study. To show how untrue this is, I once made a
census of wild birds which were nesting in the New York Zoological Park,
which is situated within the limits of New York City. Part of the Park is
wooded, while much space is given up to the collections of birds and
animals. Throughout the year thousands of people crowd the walks and
penetrate to every portion of the grounds; yet in spite of this lack of
seclusion no fewer than sixty-one species build their nests here and
successfully rear their young. The list was made without shooting a single
bird and in each instance the identification was absolute. This shows what
a little protection will accomplish, while many places of equal area in
the country which are harried by boys and cats are tenanted by a bare
dozen species.

Let us see what a walk in late June, or especially in July, will show of
these bold invaders of our very city. Wild wood ducks frequently decoy to
the flocks of pinioned birds and sometimes mate with some of them. One
year a wild bird chose as its mate a little brown female, a pinioned bird,
and refused to desert her even when the brood of summer ducklings was
being caught and pinioned. Such devotion is rare indeed.

In the top of one of the most inaccessible trees in the Park a great rough
nest of sticks shows where a pair of black-crowned night herons have made
their home for years, and from the pale green eggs hatch the most awkward
of nestling herons, which squawk and grow to their prime, on a diet of
small fish. When they are able to fly they pay frequent visits to their
relations in the great flying cage, perching on the top and gazing with
longing eyes at the abundant feasts of fish which are daily brought by the
keepers to their charges. This duck and heron are the only ones of their
orders thus to honour the Park by nesting, although a number of other
species are not uncommon during the season of migration.

Of the waders which in the spring and