It was May Day. Half a dozen birds had collected in an old apple tree, which stood in a pasture close by the road that passed the schoolhouse; some of them had not met for many months, consequently a wave of conversation rippled through the branches. “You were in a great hurry, the last time I saw you,” said the little black-and-white Downy Woodpecker to the Brown Thrasher, who was pluming his long tail, exclaiming now and then because the feathers would not lie straight. “Indeed! When? I do not remember. What was I doing?” “It was the last of October; a cold storm was blowing up, and you were starting on your southern trip in such a haste that you did not hear me call ‘good-by’ from this same tree, where I was picking insect eggs that expected to hide safely in the bark all winter, only to hatch into all kinds of mischief in the spring. But I was too quick for them; my keen eyes spied them and my beak chiselled them out. Winter and summer I’m always at work, yet some house-people do not understand that I work for my living. They seem to think that a bird who does not sing is good for nothing but a target for them to shoot at.” “That is true,” said the dust-coloured Phœbe, dashing out to swallow a May beetle, which stuck in her throat, causing her to choke and cough. “I can only call, yet I worked with the best for the farmer where I lodged last year. I made a nest on his cowshed rafters and laid two sets of lovely white eggs, but his boys stole them and that was all my thanks for a season’s toil.” “Singing birds do not fare much better,” said the Thrasher. “I may say frankly that I have a fine voice and I can sing as many tunes as any wild bird, but children rob my nest, when they can find it, and house-people drive me from their gardens, thinking I’m stealing berries.” “They treat me even worse,” said the Robin, bolting a cutworm he had brought from a piece of ploughed land. “In spring, when I lead the Bird Chorus night and morning, they rob my nest. In summer they drive me from the gardens, where I work peacefully, and in autumn, when I linger through the gloomy days, long after your travelling brothers have disappeared, they shoot me for pot-pie!” “It is a shame!” blustered Jennie Wren. “Not that I suffer much myself, for I’m not good to eat, and I’m a most ticklish mark to shoot at. Though I lose some eggs, I usually give a piece of my mind to any one who disturbs me, and immediately go and lay another nest full. Yet I say it is a shame, the way we poor birds are treated, more like tramps than citizens, though we are citizens, every one of us who pays rent and works for the family.” “Hear, hear!” croaked the Cuckoo, with the yellow bill. He is always hoarse, probably because he eats so many caterpillars that his throat is rough with their hairs. “Something ought to be done, but can Jennie Wren tell us what it shall be?”