Afield With Ranger Mac

The Wisconsin School of the Air invites you to go a field with Ranger Mac.

Your guide, Wakeland McNeil, is known to thousands of Wisconsin girls and boys as Ranger Mac.

Today he introduces us to birds as architects by means of their deserted homes.

This broadcast will be devoted to the study of birds as architects, builders of cradles in which they lay their eggs, incubate their eggs, raise their young until the young can take care of themselves.

They are temporary affairs, built up materials that they find in the surrounding area.

And when they have fulfilled the purpose, they are abandoned.

[Pause] But we shall learn in this broadcast that the materials in most of the nests are the same.

Each bird has its own characteristic kind of nest.

And there are as many kinds of nests as there are kinds of birds.

Size, shape, placement of the nest, all lend to themselves to the identification of the nest.

But once in a while we will run across the nest that is hard to identify.

Because it is out of line.

And here is a nest, the body of which is constructed almost wholly out of bits of threads or bits of twine.

woven together, held together by the falls of down.

And the interior lined with soft grasses.

The only distinguishing feature about it is it is semi-hanging.

And that is quite characteristic of the burials.

But there is one burials that does not decorate its nest on the outside.

And a good many of the birds do have some characteristic decoration on the outside.

And if this is a burials nest, then this must be a warbling burials nest.

But before we get too deeply into the architecture of the nest, let's take a look into the subject of birds themselves.

Birds do contribute to the balance of nature by the destruction of insects through the eating of these insects.

They make an immeasurable impression on the number of insects above us.

And so they are of great economic value.

But birds have another great value.

And that is the es-esthetic value.

The interest in study of birds attracts more people to the outdoors than any one element in outdoor life.

Bird clubs by the thousands are over our country.

And the Ottoman societies enlist the interests of children, millions of them, in birds.

In doing this, in attracting people to the outside, birds contribute to the mental, the physical, and the spiritual health of a people.

Now there is hardly a quality or occupation in the human world that is not parallel in the bird world.

We love birds because of their grace of movement, their beauty of color.

Because of the mysterious disappearance in the fall of the year, and their equally mysterious and great welcomed reappearance in the spring of the year.

For these things we love birds, and we love them for their beauty of song, and more particularly because of their devotion to their young.

The fact is that NAMM shows his reverence for bird life in his hope that sometime he too may have a pair of wings.

Angels.

Upbirds build most everywhere.

There is hardly a place but what a bird builds.

They build in the ground, such as the Kingfisher and the Bank swallow.

They build on the ground as the metal arch.

They build near the ground as they cat-bird.

They build in trees, in the trunks of trees, on the stubs of trees.

They build under bridges.

They build on porches.

They can even build in old shoes like the rim does very frequently.

And so they build most everywhere.

Now let's look into the work that the birds do in the construction of their nest.

This is the ramshackle nest of the English Sparrow.

Preflent, of course, common all over our country.

We turn to pieces and we find that it is made up of leaves, of feathers, straw, old rags, anything that it can pick up in its environment.

This was taken from a Martins house in which the English Sparrow had built.

But it builds among the vines of our homes.

It builds in the porches, it builds in the eaves straws, it builds most anyplace where it can stick its nest.

That's the English Sparrow.

It does make a contribution to our lives because we have it around us all winter when other birds are scared.

The bird that we all love is the official bird of Wisconsin, the Robin.

And this is the Robin's nest.

The Robin's nest is made up of grasses, coarse grasses, twigs.

They are gathered and molded by the bobby of the bird.

Then the bird goes out and goes out and gathers mud and pastures the interior with mud and molds it with her bobby.

At the same time strengthening the mud by putting grass in the mud, reinforced mud.

That's what it is.

And it makes a very solid nest.

Then to soften the nest for the reception of the eggs, soft grasses are put in the interior.

The Robin as you know builds in many places on our porches.

It comes back year after year to build its place on our porches.

The Robin is a thrush.

And here is the nest of a wood thrush.

It too uses a similar material to the Robin material found in its environment.

And twigs and things of that kind.

And these are used to bring the material together.

It has a very solid nest.

As you can see very firm.

And it is deeper than the Robin's nest because the bird itself is smaller than the Robin.

This is the cousin to the Robin and it has a very similar nest to the Robin.

The cat bird builds above the ground, put to five feet in among the bushes or among the grape vines.

And you can always tell a cat bird's nest because it uses grape vines.

And this nest is made up almost entirely of the bark of grape vines.

It has used some paper as you can see in the nest.

And then the interior of it is lined with soft grasses.

It makes a nice captain.

That is the cat bird, named after its call, which is, you know, like the mule of a cat.

One of the nicest nest that we have is the nest of the goldfish.

Made up of dung, pine grasses held together by the dung of plants.

Put in a fork of a tree covered over nicely with the leaves of the tree.

And then in the nest, you look in the nest and you find the dung of the fissile.

And so it is called a fissile bird.

It does feed on the fissile.

Some birds place their several thernes on the fork of a tree.

And this is the nest of the p-wee.

It looks like a tire.

The tire is made of the pine grasses held together by threads of spiders or by the threads of caterpillars that are building their cocoons.

But in order to conceal the nest, it is comet flowers.

And the comet flowers is made up of lichens that are held on the nest by spider webs.

It looks just like a perturbenz on a branch.

Another one that saddles the branch is this delicate little nest of the hummingbird.

Hardly a little more than an inch across and about three quarters of an inch to an inch deep.

The eggs are white and the size of, about the size of medium peas.

In order to conceal the nest, it is comet flowers by means of lichens.

It is made up of the finest plant down held together by spider webs and the threads of spinning caterpillars.

And the lichens are held on by means of spider webs also.

Just as the beaver is the architect of the wild mammal world, so is the oriole, the architect of the bird world.

And this is the oriole nest.

A bag nest about five inches deep held on the branch by means of strings.

In days when horses were abundant held there by means of, held by means of horse hair.

It is interwoven very closely with all kinds of threads and they use string very largely in the construction of the nest.

And so it wins our admiration to view the structure of a nest.

There is no knife to cut, no needle with which to thread, no glue to join, just the bea.

That's all.

But yet, our neatly finished is the bird's nest.

And so we end another trip afield with Ranger Mack.

Your guide has been Wakeland McNeill naturalist, junior forester and former state 4-H club leader.

Our trip today has shown us the home life of birds through the kinds of nests they build.

A field with Ranger Mack is a presentation of the was... As the beaver is the architect of the wild mammal world, so is the oriole the architect of the bird world.

It has the most complicated nest of them all.

This is the oriole's bag shaped nest.

It is about 5 inches deep and is hung by means of threads.

In the days when there were abundant horses most of the construction of the nest was made up of horse hair.

But now it is woven tightly with twine and with threads of all kinds.

And is a very secure nest, lasts for a long time.

And is the supreme nest of the birds that we have at least in United States.

Our admiration to view the structure of an nest comes when we see what a bird does.

And there is no knife, you know, to cut and no needle with which to thread, no nail with which to fix, no glue with which to join.

The little beak and the claws are all.

And yet how neatly finished is the product.

And so we end another trip afield with Ranger Mack.

Your guide has been Wakeland McNeil, naturalist, junior forester and former State 4-H club leader.

Our trip today has shown us the home life of birds through the kinds of nests they build.

A field with Ranger Mack is a presentation of the Wisconsin School of the Air.

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