“THE GOOD old summer time — how we all enjoy this time of the year, especially boys and girls who are out of school. Birds enjoy the summer too, and how happy they seem as they fly from tree to tree or hover over the green fields. Sometimes we find their nests in the bushes or on the ground. God teaches them how to build their little nests with sticks, leaves and feathers and mud.
Sometimes we see tiny eggs in the nest, and by and by the little birds hatch. Then father and mother bird are kept busy hunting worms and bugs to feed their babies.
Once a boy found a meadowlark’s nest with young birds in it. As they opened their little mouths, he thought he could feed them better than mother bird. He decided to raise them for pets, and so he carried them home — How sad the mother bird must have felt when her babies were taken from her.
The boy gave them bread, but the poor little things were not used to that kind of food, and they did not do well at all on it. Then one day he forgot to feed them and they died. How sad he felt!
God made the little birds to enjoy the fields and the woods. We ought not to rob or destroy their nests, for that is wrong. The Bible says: “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.” Matt. 6:2626Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? (Matthew 6:26).
ML-08/07/1966