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Beautiful Birds

[Pg 203] <h2>CHAPTER XII White Egrets, “Ospreys,” and Ostrich-Feathers</h2> The last bird I am going to tell you about is the White Egret. But, do you know, I am not quite sure if he is beautiful enough to be put in a book of beautiful birds, because, of course, a book of beautiful birds means a book of the most beautiful birds that there are, and I am not quite sure if the White Egret is so beautiful as all that. At any rate he is not so beautiful as the birds I have been telling you about, and there are many other birds in the world that I have not told you about, that are more beautiful than he is. So, perhaps, you will wonder why I put him into the book at all, but I will soon give you a proper explanation of it. In the first place, if the White Egret is not one of the most beautiful birds in the world, yet, at any rate, he has some of the most beautiful feathers that any bird has, and that alone, I think, gives him a right to be here, because, you know,[Pg 204] “fine feathers make fine birds.” And, in the second place, this poor bird is so shot and killed and persecuted for these beautiful feathers of his, that, unless you were to get your mother to make that promise about him, there would soon be no such thing as a White Egret left in the world. He and his feathers would both be gone. But now, perhaps, you will say that if “fine feathers make fine birds,” then beautiful feathers must make beautiful birds, too, and so the White Egret must be a beautiful bird. Oh, yes, he is. You are quite right. I did not mean that he was not a beautiful bird at all. All I meant was that he was not quite so beautiful as the Birds of Paradise and the Humming-birds, and birds like that—birds that look as if they had flown into a jeweller's shop, and then flown out again with all the best part of the jewellery upon them. Whether he is not as beautiful as some of the other birds we have talked about—but I will not say which, for fear of offending them—that I am not quite so sure of; but, at any rate, he is beautiful. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illo_205.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="658" alt="" /> <div class="caption">THE WHITE EGRET </div> </div> Oh, yes, he is quite a beautiful bird, is the White Egret; and now I will describe him to you. I shall not have any colours to tell you about, because he is all white—which of course you will have guessed from his name—but you know how beautiful white can be. You will not have forgotten the little[Pg 207] Humming-bird who was made still more beautiful than he had been before, by three snowflakes falling upon him. But, with this bird, it is as if the snow had fallen all over him and covered him up, for he is white all over, a beautiful, soft, silky white, as pure and delicate as the snow itself. Only his shape, perhaps, is a little funny—at least you might think so—for he has a pair of long, thin, stilty legs, and a long, thin, snaky neck, and a long, sharp, pointed beak, so that all three of these together make him a tall, thin, stilty bird. “Something like a stork, that is,” you will say, for you will have seen pictures of storks, even if you have not seen one alive in the Zoological Gardens—which is a very bad place for him, I think. Well, this bird is something like a stork, but he is a great deal more like a heron, that long-legged, long-necked bird that stands for hours in the water, waiting for a fish to come near it, so that it may catch it and swallow it; for the heron, you know, lives on fish and frogs, and things of that sort. Yes, he is very like a heron, and, do you know, there is a very good reason for that, because the White Egret is a heron. Some birds, I must tell you, have names which are like our surnames, and show the family they belong to. As long as you only know a boy's or girl's Christian name—Reginald[Pg 208] or Bertram or Dorothy or Norah or Wilhelmina—you don't know a bit what family they belong to; but as soon as you know their surnames—Smith or Brown or Jones or Thompson or Robinson—why then you do—and it is just the same with birds. Heron is really a surname, only the bird that has it, here in England, has not a Christian name as well—unless “common” is one, for he is called the Common Heron. But White Egret is a Christian name and the surname to it is Heron—for the White Egret belongs to the Heron family. That is why he is so tall and gaunt and stilty, for a heron is always like that—it is the family figure—and so now, when I tell you that he stands in the water and catches fish, you will know why he does that, too; fish is the family dish, and no heron would think of going without it, for long. But now, let me tell you about those beautiful feathers which the poor White Egret has. They grow only on his back—about the middle of it—and droop down to a little way over his tail, so that they are a foot or more long. You remember what I explained to you about the feathers in the tail of the Lyre-bird, and those that make the plumes in the beautiful Birds of Paradise—how the barbs of the feather on each side of the quill have no barbules to hold them together, so that they fall apart and wave about like beautiful, soft, silky threads.[Pg 209] If you have forgotten, then you must look back for it, because I should not explain it better here than I do there, and, besides, it would be twice over. Well, these feathers are made in the same way, only they are of a pure, shining white—like all the rest of this birds plumage—and although they are as soft as silk they are stiff at the same time, and so smooth that they look like the delicate flakings from a piece of beautiful, pure, polished ivory. Imagine a little fountain of ivory threads all shooting up together into the air, quite straight at first, and then bending over and drooping down in the most delicate, graceful way imaginable. That is what a plume of those feathers looks like, when they have been taken out and tied together, but I wish, myself, that they did not look nearly so beautiful, for it is because of those beautiful plumes, that the poor bird is being killed and killed and becoming scarcer and scarcer, every day. For the women whose hearts the little demon has frozen, wear these plumes in their hats and in their hair, and they are called “ospreys,” and are very fashionable indeed. Soldiers, too, used to wear them in their caps, but they have given up doing so. It is only the frozen-hearted women who are killing the poor White Egrets now—but ah, there are so many of them (the women I mean, not the Egrets). I have sat at the entrance of a large concert-hall, and counted[Pg 210] the faces that had these lovely egret-plumes—these beautiful, fashionable “ospreys,” so white and yet so blood-stained—nodding above them—counted them as they came in and as they went out, young faces, old faces, soft faces, hard faces, shrivelled faces, puckered faces, painted faces, plain faces, ugly faces, quite dreadful faces—ah, what numbers of them there were! It was quite difficult to count them all. Every now and again there would be a pretty face, and I used to count those separately—one—two—three—four—five—sometimes up to half-a-dozen. That was not so tiring, but, you see, I had to count them all. Oh, wise but wicked little demon, who blew his bad powders into the hearts of all the women! There were two kinds, you know, and one of them was “Vanity.” Now if it had been a man—however wicked a one—I feel sure that he would have looked about for the women with the pretty faces, and who were rather young, to blow that powder into. But the little demon was wiser, in his own wicked way. He did not go about, looking and looking. He blew it into all their hearts, and that gave him no trouble at all. Now, I must tell you that there are two different kinds of White Egrets, with these beautiful feathers that the women with the frozen hearts wear. One is much larger than the other, and is called the[Pg 211] Great White Egret. He is quite a big bird, larger even than our common heron—and you know what a big bird he is. The other one, which is called the Small White Egret, is not more than half the size of the great one, but his feathers are the most beautiful, so that, though he has not nearly so many of them, he is worth nearly twice as much money. That means, of course, that the servants of the wicked little demon, who shoot him and sell his feathers, can get nearly twice as much money for them as they can for the feathers of the other one. So, of course, they like shooting him best, but they are very glad to shoot the other one—the Great White Egret—too, for even his feathers are worth a good deal. Now, if the wicked little demon had not frozen the hearts of women, they would never want to wear feathers that cost the lives of the poor birds to whom they belong—because, you know, women are, really, so kind. Then, of course, those feathers that are so beautiful would not be worth anything (as it is called), and so men would not shoot the White Egrets, because they would not be able to sell their feathers. I am afraid they would have no better reason for not doing so than that, because men, you know, are not kind and pitiful—as women are, if only their hearts are not frozen. But, at any rate, the White Egrets would be left alive. [Pg 212] And you must not think that their feathers would really not be worth anything, then. When we talk of a thing not being worth anything, what we really mean is that we cannot sell it for money. Now what are things that you cannot sell for money? I will tell you three. There is the sky, and the air, and the sunlight. You cannot buy or sell them, but do you think they are not worth anything! I think they are worth a good deal. Then there is a good temper; nobody can buy that, but yet what a lot it is worth! Now if the beautiful feathers of the White Egret could not be sold, because the world was better and there were no frozen-hearted women to buy them, yet they would be worth something, although it would not be money. They would be worth love and pity and sympathy and interest and real admiration (which never wants to kill), for all those things would be given to the beautiful bird with its beautiful feathers, and it would be just because of those things that no one would think of killing him. His feathers, then, would be like the smiles on a face. You cannot take those out of the face, and put them in a hat. If you could, then some one would soon say to you:[Pg 213] “Will you part with a few of your smiles? They are fashionable in hats just now; I will give you, for a nice, bright one—let me see—half-a-crown.” Then you might say that a nice, bright smile was worth half-a-crown. But I think it is worth much more where it is, in your face, though you cannot take it out and get half-a-crown for it. Smiles are not bought for money in that way, but you must remember that what is not worth money is often worth much better things. That is why I wish the feathers of the poor White Egrets were not worth even a penny. If they were not, then, if you were to go to the countries where they live, you would see those feathers on the birds themselves, where they look most beautiful, and you could watch the birds (with the feathers on them) flying through the air, or perched in trees, or walking about in the water and catching fish in it, or building their nests, or feeding their young, or doing all sorts of other interesting and amusing things. And they would not be so rare then; in fact they would be quite common, so that you would not have to go into such out-of-the-way places—yes, and such unhealthy places too—in order to see them. No, they would be all about, so that they would often come to see you, instead of your going to see them; sometimes, even, they might come into your garden—for why should you not have a garden in another country?—and walk about on the lawn. Think how interesting that would be, and how pretty it would look!—and all because[Pg 214] those beautiful white feathers would not be worth anything. But, because they are worth a good deal, men who would kill every bird in the world for money go out with guns, and shoot these poor White Egrets whenever and wherever they see them. And, because of this, they are only to be found, now, in swamps and places where you, and most other sensible people, do not like to go; so that, now, the only people who ever see these beautiful birds are just the servants of the demon, who murder them as soon as they see them. You and I, and others like us, who would like to look at them, and admire them, and watch their ways, and learn all about them, cannot do so, cannot see them at all, cannot even imagine them, unless in swamps, and being shot. Yet once they were quite common, so that everybody might look at them. Now they are getting rarer and rarer, so that very soon, if we do not do something about it quickly, there will be no more of them left in the world. How dreadful that is to think of! If you were to see a very beautiful picture, or statue, and then, afterwards, you were to hear that it had been destroyed, you would feel sorry, would you not? And not only you, but all the world would. I feel perfectly sure that if Sir Edwin Landseer, who (as your mother will tell you) was a great animal artist, had painted a[Pg 215] White Egret, everybody would think it quite shocking if it were to be burnt or torn up. You would hear people say (and they would be quite right to say so): “Oh, it is dreadful, it is quite dreadful to think of! It can never be replaced! There is no such other artist! To think of such a masterpiece being destroyed!” Now, when all the White Egrets (and let me tell you they are all masterpieces) have been destroyed, it will be quite impossible to replace any one of them; so that that kind of bird—or any other kind of bird or animal that has been shot and shot till there are no more of it left—will have gone in just the same way that a picture goes, when you burn it or tear it to pieces. But is there any picture of a bird or animal, that is so beautiful or so wonderful as that bird or animal itself? And is there any artist so great as the artist who made it, who made that bird or animal, that picture with a life inside it? You know who that artist is, you know His name—or if you do not, your mother will tell you. I have called Him Dame Nature, but that is only just a way of talking. He has another name, greater than that. He is a much greater artist than Sir Edwin Landseer (or even Raphael or Phidias), but I am afraid there are not many people who really know that He is. Perhaps He is too great to be appreciated. That sometimes happens, even amongst ourselves. [Pg 216] Well, these poor White Egrets—these masterpieces that are always being destroyed—are birds that live, mostly, in America—in Mexico, and California, and Florida, and, I think, all over South and Central America. They live in the swamps and lagunes—as they are called—of the great forests, where trees grow all about in the water—such dark, gloomy, wonderful places—and the servants of the little demon, whose business it is to kill them, have to follow them to those places, and live there, too. Of course it is very unhealthy for them, and they often die there; but the women with the frozen hearts do not mind that, any more than they mind the Egrets being shot. They want the feathers, and when they pay for the feathers they pay for the lives as well—for they are honest, although their hearts have been frozen. Perhaps you will wonder how men can live at all, in such places as those. Of course, as it is all water, they have to live in boats or canoes, and as soon as they have found out a pool or creek, where the White Egrets come to catch fish, or some trees where they have built their nests, they cover their boats over with reeds or rushes or ferns or the branches of trees, so that, even though you were to come quite close to them, you would not think they were boats at all, but only part of the forest. That is what the poor[Pg 217] White Egrets think, for the men sit in their covered-up boats, quite silently—without speaking a word—and, as soon as they come near enough to them, fire at them and kill them. And now I will tell you another dreadful thing, which makes the killing of these poor birds more cruel even than you will have thought it was, though I am sure you will have thought it cruel enough. I have spoken of their having nests, so, of course, there will often be young ones in those nests, who cannot feed themselves, but have to be fed by the parent birds. What do the young ones do when the parent birds—their own fathers and mothers—have been shot? I will tell you. They starve. That is what they do, and that is what the women with the frozen hearts, who wear these feathers, know that they do—for they have been told so, now, often enough. Is it not terrible? For those pure, white, beautiful feathers, not only have the grown birds been killed, but the young ones—their children—have starved—starved slowly—in the nest where they were born. Day after day they had looked out from it, to see their father or mother come flying to them, with something to eat; day after day they had not seen them, and when the night came—oh, they were so hungry! Before, how glad they used to be when they saw the great, white wings come floating to them,[Pg 218] slowly, through the air, like a silver sun, like a broad, white, silken sail. Nearer and nearer they came, and then there was a cry of greeting, and such good appetites for breakfast or dinner. Their appetites were just as good now—indeed better, for they were starving—but where was father or mother, where were the broad, white wings, the silken sail, the great silver sun? Oh, how they strained their eyes and stretched their poor, little, long necks over the side of the nest, to try to see them, to see if they were not coming, if there was only a speck of white in the distance! But they saw nothing, for father and mother had both been shot. And, now, they grew so weak with hunger that they could not hold their heads up, any more. They laid them down in the nest, and their eyes closed, and their poor little voices only came in whispers, “Feed us! feed us!”—they had been screams before. Then even the whispers ceased, the beaks could not be opened, and slowly, slowly they starved. And those are the feathers—feathers that have been got in that way—which the poor women whose hearts the little demon has frozen, wear in their hats. In those hats they go out to concerts, and hear songs that are all of love and tenderness, and music that seems to have been made by the angels in heaven; in those hats they go to meetings that are held, perhaps, for some good and just thing—to save people from[Pg 219] being killed, or children from being starved—some of them may even speak at such meetings—and in those hats, those very hats; in those hats, too, they go to church, they kneel down in them, and they pray—yes, pray. Oh, it is wonderful—wonderful! In Africa, where the people believe in witchcraft, one man will throw a spell upon another man that he hates, so that wherever that man goes and whatever he does, he always sees his face, his enemy's face. There it is, always before him, and, at last, he gets so tired of seeing it that he dies, or even kills himself. Of course, he does not really see the face, and his enemy does not really cast a spell upon him, because there is no such thing as witchcraft, really; it is all superstition, as I think you know. But as the one man thinks he sees the face, and the other man thinks he is casting a spell upon him, and making him see it, it comes to very nearly—if not quite—the same thing as if it were real, especially as the one man does really die. Ah, if those hats could cast a spell (not quite the same one as that, but something like it), if, wherever the women who wore them went—whether it was to concerts where they heard beautiful music, or to meetings where good things were talked about, or to church where they kneeled down and prayed—they always saw a picture of a nest, with young birds[Pg 220] in it, starving—slowly starving! if it was always there, always before them—that pitiful picture—and if the voices came, too—the screams, and then the whispers—“Feed us! feed us!” then, I think, they would take off those hats, and they would not wear them any more. They need not die or kill themselves, they would only have to take off those hats. And they will do that now, because you and every little child in the world will have asked them to. Yes, they will do it now. They will take off those hats—those hats of starvation and murder, of terrible and shameful cruelty—they will leave off wearing them, they will never put them on, again. Those plumes called “ospreys,” that one sees everywhere—in streets and in shop-windows, at concerts, at meetings, and in churches—that bend above fine sentiments, that wave over charities and goodnesses, and tremble, softly, in the breath that prayers are made of—they will tear them out of their hats and out of their hair—yes, and out of their hearts too. They will hate them, they will loathe them, and when they say, next time, in church, upon their knees, “Give us this day our daily bread,” they will try not to remember them, or only to think that they are unfashionable. Oh, make them unfashionable! for you have not yet, you have not said “promise” yet. Oh, then, at[Pg 221] once, at once! Break the spell of the demon, that spell that is so real and so cruel, that spell that kills the soul. Thaw the poor frozen heart, thaw it with your own warm one, with your lips, with your soft hands and arms. Thaw it with the tears in your eyes, as they look up, thaw it with the words that you say, “Mother, do not kill parents, and make children starve! Mother, do not wear ‘ospreys!’ Oh, mother, promise, promise!” So, now, we have saved the White Egrets, as well as all those other birds that I have been telling you of, and that your mother has promised about. But does that save all the beautiful birds in the world? Oh no, for there are ever so many more than I have been able to say anything about, in a little book like this, more—oh, a great many more—than all the Birds of Paradise, and all the Humming-birds, and all the other ones in the other chapters—for, you know, there are not many—put together. And though the Humming-birds and the Birds of Paradise and the White Egrets and the others are, now, quite safe, yet, if your mother does not promise about the rest, people will go on killing them, till there are no more of them left in the world. Think what that would mean! Why, besides hundreds and hundreds of beautiful foreign birds, it would mean all the kingfishers—the star-birds (for there has been no promise about them)—[Pg 222]and all the chaffinches and bullfinches and goldfinches and greenfinches—yes, and all the little robin-redbreasts too—being shot and shot, killed and killed, till there were no more of them left, either in England or anywhere else. For, of course, when all the beautiful foreign birds were gone, then the frozen-hearted women would begin to wear our own little birds, here at home, in their hats. You would hear one lady say to another: “I wanted to have a redbreast tippet this winter, but, my dear they are so expensive. You see, hundreds go to one, because there's only the breast, so I'm afraid I must fall back on greenfinch. They're less, of course; you see, there's a greater surface, and they're not quite so rare. But I did so want redbreast!” And, then, the other lady would say: “Well, I think I should manage it if I were you, dear, for, you know, they say there'll soon be no more real redbreast—only imitation. So it's best to get one, whilst there's time.” And you may be sure that it would be managed somehow—things like that always are. Well, then, but what is to be done? Do you think your mother would make a promise about all the birds? I think she would if you were to ask her. But then, perhaps, she might think it a little hard not to wear any feathers—just at first, at any rate—although flowers and all sorts of other things[Pg 223] look ever so much nicer in hats. Oh, but wait. Are there no feathers that can be worn in hats without its doing any harm at all—without any bird being killed to get them? Why, yes, of course there are—and the very handsomest of them all—ostrich-feathers. Ostriches are kept on farms, and twice a year, their beautiful white and black feathers are clipped and sent to the market. So, as they are not killed, but kept alive and fed and taken care of, and have a very good time of it—as I can tell you that they do, for I have lived on an ostrich-farm—I do not see any reason why one should not wear their feathers—if one wants to. And how beautiful their feathers are! I think, myself, that they are the only feathers that really look nice in a hat—at any rate they are the only ones that ever looked nice in a portrait. A portrait of a lady in a beautiful, broad-brimmed hat, with beautiful, broad, soft ostrich-feathers curling all round it, looks lovely; but a portrait of a lady in a stiff little pork-pie sort of thing, with a lot of heads and wings and tails, sticking bolt upright in it, looks horrid. People, you know, always look like their portraits, as long as their portraits are good ones—and, of course, we are not talking about bad portraits. So I think that any sensible woman, even though her heart were frozen and she were determined to wear feathers, would only[Pg 224] wear ostrich-feathers. Of course, no woman whose heart the wicked little demon had not frozen would ever wear any other kind. But there are not going to be frozen-hearted women in the world any more, now, because their little children will soon have thawed all their hearts, and the Goddess of pity is just beginning to wake up again. So now, ask your dear, dear mother to make just one more promise, just one more which will be better than all the others she has made. Of course she could not be expected to make it quite at first, but now, after all that you have told her, I think she will. Just go to her and throw your arms round her neck, and whisper: “Mother, promise not to wear any feathers, except the beautiful ostrich-feathers that you look so lovely in.” As soon as she has promised, then all the beautiful birds in the world (and that means all the birds, for all birds are beautiful) will be saved, and it is you and the other little children who will have saved them. So, of course, you must keep on saying “Promise” till she does. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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