Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 157, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1910 — MURDER OF HERMIT THRUSH. [ARTICLE]

MURDER OF HERMIT THRUSH.

Crime of the Batcher Bird, Expect©d to Kill the Sparrow. Ornithologists say that Prospect park in Brooklyn Is right on the north and south bird route, the Cincinnati Tlmes-Star’s New York correspondent says. Because of that fact—and because it is protected from eyery one but the lawless Italians —it ordinarily contains a greater variety of bird life than any other Blmilar park in the country, perhaps. Thirty varieties have often been counted there of a morning. It was only the other day that a tragedy of the feathered world was reported. A hermit thrush—rarest of all song birds—had been murdered by the shrike, or butcher bird, and his soft little body Impaled upon a thorn. The guardians of the park were ordered to kill the shrike on sight. We liked him while he confined himself to a diet of English sparrows,” said the superintendent, “but he s like the other foreigners against whom we contend here; a very little liberty goes to his head.” He walked on as he spoke. On a little patch of green sward half a dozen European starlings were bobbing about. They had been brought to this country by a rich New Yorker not long ago and placed on his Staten Island estate. They look like blackbirds, except that their tails are short and their bills are brilliantly yellow. On a bench by the walk a .man sat, leaning forward, watching them. The superintendent spoke to him. “Do you know what they are?” he asked. “Mein Gott, yes,” said the man, never changing his pose. “In thirty years I has not seen them—not since the day I ran away from mein fader’s house In Germany to seek mein fortune. That day I heard them sing ” He put his head in his hands and burst Into tears.