CHAPTER XXXI.

_Creating a Bird Sanctuary._

A bird sanctuary is a suitable area of ground set aside for the birds to congregate in for shelter, food and protection, where their natural enemies are destroyed, and where neither rich nor poor dare molest them, “nor thieves break through and steal.”

Here the birds will congregate in countless numbers, especially during their migration, and hold their great annual picnic and vocal contest, which enables each to select the best sweetheart. As soon as she consents to fly in a double harness with him and he says “I will, so help me Sun, Moon and Stars,” they are off together, some for life, others for one season only. Now as soon as God’s wireless says to them “The weather is O.K. at your nesting grounds,” they join in a sort of a God-be-with-you-till-we-meet-again chorus and rise high on the evening air, and before the stars close their eyes again, these winged creatures are one thousand miles farther on, and the rising sun finds them singing on the same old perch of last year, right near their nesting place. I said evening air, because most birds migrate during the night.

The non-migratory birds will winter in this same sanctuary. Last winter, the eighth winter my sanctuary was set out, I fed over one-half bushel of wheat daily to the Bob White quail that wintered in there. As soon as spring came, these quail all left, and are now scattered over at least a two-mile area of the very best farming country, breeding on nearly every farm. And best of all, I have wheat ready to feed a bigger flock next winter.

The sanctuary plan is the only way I know of to control the two-legged cannibal, he who apparently will not allow his heart nor brain to act at all, but simply lets his murderous trigger-finger control his whole carcass. It may sound strange to the reader that I speak so harshly of this class of being, but it is personal knowledge that causes it. Being in the woods so much through life, depending as a hunter does, largely on my hearing, my ear drums have been kept exceptionally active, and up until the last few years I could almost hear a gnat-fly sneeze; the result is I have heard a whole lot of things that would have sounded better had I been totally deaf.

One day a man came here with two or three younger fellows, including one of his own boys. After showing them around, I came to the park and called the pheasants, and three beautiful Golden Pheasants came out and just spread their gorgeous plumage. As they strutted across the green lawn, all fairly held their breath at such an eye-feast. I turned to go to the house, made a few steps and changed my mind. The boy said, “Oh father, just wouldn’t they look nice in our woods?” The father switched his cud over and said. “I’d like to see them in the woods when I had my old No. 10 shotgun.”

Years ago I stocked this township with Ring-necked pheasants, and all the power I had was “Please don’t shoot the pheasants.” A hunter got on the street car three miles north of my house, and as he quieted down he slapped his hand on his game-sack and remarked, “I’ve got five of them in here the red-headed blank-blank will never see again!” Now this man is hardly acquainted with me and I know he has nothing particular against me; only he just wanted to curse the man that had given him such a good day’s sport.

There is another man in this township that apparently sent word to me in a roundabout way that he had three duck-tags, and if I would give him a dollar each for them, as I did the Esquimaux, I could have the tags. Now these tags were put on young ducks that I raised here, and owing to the water drying up in the north pond that summer, they left early in September and went to this nearby water. But if this man lives until I give him a dollar each for the three tags off these hand-raised pets, he will sure hold the world’s record for longevity.

One of the common questions asked around my home is: “How do you understand the birds so well?” Really, the birds are an open book. The question is how to understand humanity. Seventy-five per cent. of the hunters that shoot the overflow of birds from my bird sanctuary can easily be called my enemies, while the fact remains they would never see a goose, let alone shoot one, if I did not feed, pet and harbor them here. But I have this consolation: If I met with their approval—Well, ’nuff said!

This makes me think of Ikie and Jakie. Jakie had apparently been imposed upon. Ikie, trying to console him, said, “Jakie, don’t worry. Our Saviour had enemies.” “Yes,” replied Jakie, “but my Got, look vat they done to him!”

A sanctuary where one expects to entertain water fowl should, of course, be quite a large area of land and water; the reader can plainly see this point; and a natural marsh is, of course, the proper place. But a sanctuary for the non-water birds can be made anywhere in the country or suburbs of a town; possibly a ravine with a small stream running through it would be preferable. A great many sites can be chosen where the trees and shrubbery are already grown. Personally, I prefer growing my own trees, it is such a pleasure. Five acres makes a nice sanctuary. I would sooner have two five-acre sanctuaries, a mile or a mile and a half apart, on three thousand acres, than one fifteen-acre sanctuary, for the same area of land. These sanctuaries should be on or near the public highway so that the gamekeeper could drive to and from them, the same as the mail carrier to the country mail box. This would enable him to visit an almost unlimited number of them every three days. What an enjoyable occupation this certainly would be for him, knowing that during the severe storms every bird in the country was in there, safely under his care. “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.” Or I would sooner be a gamekeeper, caring for the birds in these little sanctuaries, than I would dwell in the Waldorf Astoria, free of charge.

If you contemplate planting one, first summer-fallow the land for one year. Plant evergreen trees, seven feet apart, eight rods wide all around the outside, leaving twelve to fifteen rods square in the centre. Here you will build your feed-racks and feed-bungalows. Set this out with all kinds of fruit-bearing shrubs and vines. Now, with a dog-and-cat-proof fence around the outside, your eyes will be opened as to what you can do with the birds.

I got my trees from the Ontario Forestry Department, costing me less than one dollar per thousand; I cultivated them for five years. The eighth year my trees were so thick you couldn’t see a box-car a rod from you.

The fifth year one pair of mourning doves came and built; the ninth year, doves nested by the hundreds, and their sweet, cooing voices continue from early daybreak until the stars appear again.

Of course, to grow a sanctuary from seedlings—trees that are no bigger than ordinary tomato-plants—takes time; but remember, the Great Provider, Himself, couldn’t make a four-year-old jackass in ten minutes. All of these things take a little time, but time well spent. Every golf course in America should be a bird sanctuary; just a small clump of shrubs here and there does the trick and brings the songs that you golfers cannot afford to be without.

“Oh, but how can we get the birds to come?” is the great cry. Please leave this to the birds. Don’t you worry about them, nor don’t run all over America to take care of them. Just build the sanctuary and let them come to you to be taken care of. My experiments here have proven that they will come clear across the continent to be cared for, and that the sanctuary plan is a sure preventive of our birds becoming annihilated by their enemies. Just the other day as I walked through my jungle four beautiful woodcocks flushed from under the boughs that I pressed back. After an absence of over forty years the dear old woodcock is back on the same soil!

Yes, the sanctuary plan will permit us to have Bob White quail all along southern Canada. Quail in such a place will stand almost any kind of winter. It is simply up to us to take more pleasure in doing such things. It is no longer a question of what can we have, but a question of what will we have.

Remember, you can sit in your parlor with the best piano in America, and if some one doesn’t reach out and touch the keys, that instrument will remain, dormant, and you will be deprived of the lovely music it is capable of producing.