ardens and parks you have made so beautiful for
your children, especially your poor children to play in.
Every year we fly a great way over the country, keeping all
the time where the sun is bright and warm. And we know that
whenever you do anything the other people all over this
great land between the seas and the Great Lakes find it out,
and pretty soon will try to do the same. We know. We know.

We are Americans just the same as you are. Some of us, like
you, came across the great sea. But most of the birds like
us have lived here a long while; and the birds like us
welcomed your fathers when they came here many, many years
ago. Our fathers and mothers have always done their best to
please your fathers and mothers.

Now we have a sad story to tell you. Thoughtless or bad
people are trying to destroy us. They kill us because our
feathers are beautiful. Even pretty and sweet girls, who we
should think would be our best friends, kill our brothers
and children so that they may wear our plumage on their
hats. Sometimes people kill us for mere wantonness. Cruel
boys destroy our nests and steal our eggs and our young
ones. People with guns and snares lie in wait to kill us; as
if the place for a bird were not in the sky, alive, but in a
shop window or in a glass case. If this goes on much longer
all our song birds will be gone. Already we are told in some
other countries that used to be full of birds, they are now
almost gone. Even the nightingales are being killed in
Italy.

Now we humbly pray that you will stop all this and will save
us from this sad fate. You have already made a law that no
one shall kill a harmless song bird or destroy our nests or
our eggs. Will you please make another one that no one shall
wear our feathers, so that no one shall kill us to get them?
We want them all ourselves. Your pretty girls are pretty
enough without them. We are told that it is as easy for you
to do it as for a blackbird to whistle.

If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over. We
will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat.
We will show them how to live together in peace and love and
to agree as we do in our nests. We will build pretty houses
which you will like to see. We will play about your garden