Outdoor Sports and Games Part 11

You can sometimes buy aquarium cement or prepared putty at a "gold fish" store. This you will need to putty in the gla.s.s. If you cannot buy it, make it yourself from the asphalt varnish and whiting. Be sure that the paint and putty of an aquarium is thoroughly dry before you fill it with water.

Perhaps the most satisfactory way to study fish and insect life in water is to use all gla.s.s boxes and globes. So many kinds of fish and insects are natural enemies, even though they inhabit the same streams, that they must be kept separate anyway. To put them in the same aquarium would be like caging up two game roosters. If we were studying the development of mosquitoes, for instance, from the larvae or eggs to the fully developed insect, we should not get very far in our nature study if we put them in an aquarium with fish. A fish will soon make short work of a hundred mosquito wigglers just as a large frog will eat the fish, a snake will eat the frog and so on.

Rectangular gla.s.s boxes such as are commonly used for aquaria cost less than a dollar per gallon capacity. Goldfish globes cost about the same. White gla.s.s round aquaria are much cheaper and those made of greenish domestic gla.s.s are the cheapest of all, a gla.s.s tank holding eight gallons costing but two dollars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A self-sustaining or balanced aquarium]

Any transparent vessel capable of holding water, even a Mason jar will make an aquarium from which a great deal of pleasure may be derived.

The old way of maintaining aquaria in good condition required a great deal of care and attention. The water had to be changed at least once a day if running water was not available, and altogether they were so much trouble that as a rule owners soon tired of them.

Modern aquaria are totally different. By a proper combination of fish and growing plants we can almost duplicate the conditions of nature and strike a balance so that the water need never be changed except when it becomes foul or to clean the gla.s.s.

These are called "self-sustaining" aquaria and they are the only kind to have unless we can furnish running water from a public water supply. Self-sustaining aquaria are very simple and any boy or girl living near a brook can stock one at no expense whatever.

The method is as follows: First cover the bottom of the aquarium with a layer of sand and pebbles to a depth of about two inches. Then plant in the bottom some aquatic or water plants that you have collected from a near-by lake. Any kind of water plants will do--the kind of plants boys always call seaweed, even a thousand miles from the sea.

In collecting the plants, choose small specimens and obtain roots and all.

If you can find it, the best plant is fanwort. Other good kinds are hornwort, water starwort, tape gra.s.s, water poppy, milfoil, willow moss, and floating plants like duckweed. Even if you do not know these by name they are probably common in your neighbourhood. Fill the tank with clean water. That taken from a spring or well is better than cistern water. After two or three days, when the plants seem to be well rooted, put in your fish. You may keep your aquarium in a light place, but always keep it out of the sun in summer and away from the heat of a stove or radiator in winter.

The nature student will not attempt to stock up his aquarium immediately. He should always leave room for one more fish or bug. One year I started with a lone newt and before the summer was over I had thirteen sunfish, pickerel, ba.s.s, minnows, catfish, carp, trout, more newts, pollywogs or tadpoles, five kinds of frogs, an eel and all sorts of bugs, waterbeetles and insects. I soon found that one kind of insect would kill another and that sometimes my specimens would grow wings over night and fly away. But to learn these things, even at our own disappointment is "nature study." If we knew it all in advance, we would not have much use for our experimental aquarium.

Always keep a few snails and tadpoles, for they are the scavengers and will eat the refuse stuff and keep the gla.s.s free from greenish sc.u.m.

Boys and girls are almost sure to overfeed fish. This is a great mistake. The best standard feed is dried ants' eggs that can be bought for a few cents a box at any bird and fish store. Do not feed pieces of bread and meat. Study what their natural food is and if possible get that for them.

If your fish seem sickly, give them a five-minute bath in salt water every day for a week. The kind of an aquarium above described is intended to fill an entirely different purpose from the usual gold fish globe. In your excursions you will find all sorts of queer looking eggs and specimens. Some of the eggs are so tiny that they look almost like black or white dust on the water. Another kind will be a ma.s.s like a jellyfish with brown dots in it, still others will be fastened in ma.s.ses to the under side of a leaf in the water or perhaps on the bottom. What are they? That is just the question and that is why you will carefully collect them and take them home to await developments.

Always keep an accurate note-book with dates and facts. Also keep a close watch on your specimens. Sometimes they will hatch and be eaten by the other bugs before you could read this chapter.

A nature student will need some part of the house that he may call his very own. Here he can keep his specimens, his aquarium, his herbarium and what not. Around the wall he can hang the twigs with their coc.o.o.ns, oak galls, last year's wasp and bird nests and other treasures. He should also have a work table that a little glue or ink will not injure and a carpet that has no further use in the household.

Usually one corner of the attic or cellar is just the place.

See to it that you do not make other people uncomfortable in the pursuit of your hobby. You will find that almost every one is afraid of bugs and toads and that most people live in a world full of wonderful things and only see a little beyond the end of their noses.

There is a very practical side to nature study and the princ.i.p.al way that we can make it really pay, is to know our friends from our enemies in the animal and insect world. There are insects that chew, suck and bore to ruin our orchards and grain crops. They are our enemies. If we know their life story, where they hide and how they breed, we can fight them better. For every dollar's worth of crops that a farmer grows, it is estimated that his insect enemies eat another dollar's worth. A little bug called the "San Jose" scale has nearly ruined the orchards of some of the Eastern states. To fight him, we must know how he lives. That is nature study. By study we learn that the hop-toad is our best garden friend. He will spend the whole night watching for the cutworms that are after our tomato plants. When we see a woodp.e.c.k.e.r industriously pecking at the bark of our apple trees, we know that he is after the larvae of the terrible codling moth and we call him our friend.

After we learn that a ladybug lives almost entirely on plant lice and scale insects, we never kill one again except perhaps to place a specimen In our collection. Naturalists say that without ladybugs, our orchards would soon be entirely killed off.

The dragon fly or mosquito hawk as well as "water tigers," water striders and many kinds of beetles are the natural enemies of mosquitoes and as they never harm our crops we should never harm them.

Nearly every living creature has some enemies.

You have perhaps heard the famous verse of Dean Swift:

"So naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller that upon them prey And these have smaller still to bite 'em And so proceed _ad infinitum_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: An observation beehive]

Among our insect friends the leading place belongs either to the honey bee or the silkworm. As silkworms are not especially successful in this country and as their princ.i.p.al food, mulberry trees, are not common, the nature student who cares to study our beneficial insects had better devote his attention to honey bees. An observation beehive is simply a gla.s.s box or hive instead of a wooden one. When we are not engaged in studying our bee city, the hive must be covered with a blanket as bees prefer to work in the dark. A boy or girl living in the country can also keep bees profitably and thus combine business with pleasure. A single hive will in a few years produce enough swarms to give us a good start as "bee farmers."

X

THE CARE OF PETS

Cats--Boxes for song birds--How to attract the birds--Tame crows--The pigeon fancier--Ornamental land and water fowl--Rabbits, guinea pigs, rats and mice--How to build coops--General rules for pets--The dog

In this chapter on pets, I regret exceedingly that I cannot say much in favour of the family cat. Like nearly all children, I was brought up to love kittens and to admire their playful, cunning ways. When a kitten becomes a cat my love for it ceases. Cats will do so many mean, dishonourable things, and will catch so many song birds and so few rats and mice that it simply has become a question whether we shall like the song birds or the cat. So many people do like cats that it is unfair perhaps to condemn the whole race for the misdeeds of a few. If a cat is carefully watched or if we put a bell on its neck, these precautions will to a certain extent keep the cat from catching birds, but most people have something better to do than to act as guardian for a cat. The fact is that a cat is a stupid animal seldom showing any real affection or loyalty for its owner and possessing but little intelligence. It is very difficult to teach a cat even the simplest tricks. We never know when a cat will turn on its best friend. They have the "tiger" instinct of treachery. A cat which one minute is contentedly purring on our lap may sink its claws into us the next.

The only way to force a cat to catch mice is to keep it half starved.

Then instead of catching mice, it will probably go after birds if there are any in the neighbourhood. I have shut a cat up in a room with a mouse and it is doubtful whether the cat or the mouse were the more frightened. The cat does more damage to the song birds of this country than any other enemy they have. If kept at home and well fed, cats sometimes become so fat and stupid that they will not molest birds but this is due to laziness and not to any good qualities in the cat. In normal condition they are natural hunters.

The habits of a cat are unclean, its unearthly cries at night are extremely disagreeable and altogether it is a nuisance. A famous naturalist, Shaler, once said "A cat is the only animal that has been tolerated, esteemed and at times wors.h.i.+pped without having a single distinctly valuable quality."

A few years ago a quail had a nest under a rock opposite my house.

Quail raise their young like poultry rather than like robins or wrens or the other song birds. As soon as the tiny quail chicks are hatched, the mother takes them around like a hen with a brood of chickens. This mother quail was my especial care and study. She became so tame that I could feed her. Finally she hatched out ten tiny brown b.a.l.l.s of feathers. Our cat had been watching her, too, but not from the same motives and one day the cat came home with the mother quail in her mouth. She ran under the porch just out of reach and calmly ate it.

The little brood were too small to look out for themselves so of course they all died or fell an easy victim to other cats. The mother was probably an easy prey because in guarding the young, a quail will pretend to have a broken wing and struggle along to attract attention to her and away from her little ones, who scurry to high gra.s.s for safety. I have never been very friendly to cats since I witnessed this episode.

It has been estimated that the average domestic cat kills an average of one song bird a day during the season when the birds are with us.

In certain sections a cat has been known to destroy six nests of orioles, thrushes and bobolinks in a single day. The worst offenders are cats that live around barns and old houses in a half wild condition. Many people who say they "haven't the heart to kill a cat"

will take it away from home and drop it along the road. A thoughtless act like this may mean the death of a hundred birds in that neighbourhood. It takes less heart to kill the cat than to kill the birds. So much for the cat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A bird house]

Birds make splendid pets, but in keeping them in captivity, we must be sure that we are not violating the game laws of the state we live in.

Nearly everywhere it is unlawful to keep in cages any native song birds or those that destroy harmful insects--the so-called "insectivorous birds." This includes thrushes, wrens, robins, bluebirds, orioles or, in fact, practically all birds but crows, blackbirds and kingfishers. It does not cover canaries, parrots, or any birds that are not native. It is an excellent law and every boy or girl should act as a special policeman to see that his friends and companions do not molest either birds or their nests. It is cruel to cage a wild bird anyway for a cage is nothing but a prison. There is no law against taming the birds or making friends of them and after all this is the most satisfactory way.

If we build houses for the birds to nest in, provide feed for them and in other ways do what we can to attract them, they will soon learn that we are their friends. We must study their habits and always avoid frightening them. Next to a cat, the worst enemies of our song birds are the English sparrows. A sparrow is always fair game for the boy with a slingshot or rifle. In many places these sparrows have driven practically all the other birds out of the neighbourhood, have robbed their nests and in other ways have shown themselves to be a public nuisance. Until 1869 there were no sparrows in this country and now they are more numerous than any other variety of birds, and sooner or later, the Government will have to take steps to exterminate them or we shall have no song birds at all.

The usual size of a bird house is six inches square and about eight inches high. It should always be made of old weather-beaten boards in order not to frighten away its prospective tenants by looking like a trap of some kind. The chances are that the sparrows will be the first birds to claim a house unless we keep a close watch and drive them away.

One way to keep them out is to make the entrance doorway too small for them to enter. A hole an inch in diameter will admit a wren or chickadee and bar out a sparrow, but it will also keep out most of the other birds. The usual doorway should be two inches in diameter. It is surprising how soon after we build our bird house we find a tiny pair making their plans to occupy it and to take up housekeeping. Sometimes this will happen the same day the bird house is set up. Always provide some nesting material near at hand; linen or cotton thread, ravellings, tow, hair and excelsior are all good. Of course we must not attempt to build the nest. No one is skillful enough for that.

Nearly all of our native birds are migratory, that is they go south for the winter. The date that we may look for them to return is almost the same year after year. Some few birds--bluebirds, robins, cedar birds and song sparrows will stay all winter if it is mild but as a rule we must not expect the arrival of the feathered songsters until March. The phoebe bird is about the first one we shall see.

In April look for the brown thrasher, catbird, wren, barn, eave and tree swallows, martins, king birds and chipping sparrows. In May the princ.i.p.al birds of our neighbourhood will return--thrushes, vireos, tanagers, grosbeaks, bobolinks, orioles. The game birds--quail, partridge, meadowlarks and pheasants do not migrate as a rule. At least they do not disappear for a time and then return. When they leave a neighbourhood, they rarely come back to it.

All the song birds begin nesting in May. Consequently we should have our bird houses "ready for occupancy" May 1st. It will take about twelve days for most birds to hatch their eggs. Some varieties will hatch three broods in a season, but two is the usual rule.

We shall require a great deal of patience to tame the wild birds. Some bird lovers have succeeded in teaching birds to feed from their hands.

A wild bird that is once thoroughly frightened can probably never be tamed again.

A crow is a very interesting pet. Crows are especially tamable and may be allowed full liberty around the dooryard. We must get a young one from the nest just before it is ready to fly. Crows are great thieves and are attracted by bright objects. If you have a tame crow, and if any member of your household misses jewellery or thimbles you had better look in the crows' nest before you think that burglars have been around.

The chief difference between tamed wild animals, such as squirrels, birds, owls, foxes, crows and so on, and the domesticated animals and birds, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, pigeons and chickens, lies in the possibility with the latter of modifying nature and breeding for certain special markings, colours or size. All breeds of chickens from the little bantams to the enormous Brahmas have been bred from a wild species of chicken found in India and called the jungle fowl.

All the great poultry shows held throughout the country annually are for the purpose of exhibiting the most perfectly marked specimens of the breeders' skill. This is decided by judges who award prizes. The compet.i.tion is sometimes very keen. In barred Plymouth Rock chickens, for example, there are sometimes a hundred birds entered to compete for a single prize. The breeders are called fanciers. The princ.i.p.al breeders of certain animals such as rabbits, pigeons or poultry, form an a.s.sociation or club and agree to an imaginary type of the animal called the ideal or "Standard of Perfection."