Lesson V

The Beak of a Bird

Leading thought—Each kind of bird has a beak especially adapted for getting its food. The beak and feet of a bird are its chief weapons and implements.

Methods—Study first the beak of the hen or chick and then that of the duckling or gosling.

Observations—1. What kind of food does the hen eat and where and how does she find it in the field or garden? How is her beak adapted to get this food? If her beak were soft like that of a duck could she peck so hard for seeds and worms? Has the hen any teeth? Does she need any?

2. Compare the bill of the hen with that of the duck. What are the differences in shape? Which is the harder?

3. Note the saw teeth along the edge of the duck’s bill. Are these for chewing? Do they act as a strainer? Why does the duck need to strain its food?

4. Could a duck pick up a hen’s food from the earth or the hen strain out a duck’s food from the water? For what other things than getting food do these fowls use their bills?

5. Can you see the nostrils in the bill of a hen? Do they show plainer in the duck? Do you think the hen can smell as keenly as the duck?

Supplementary reading—The Bird Book, p. 99; The First Book of Birds, pp. 95–7; Mother Nature’s Children, Chapter VIII.

“It is said that nature-study teaching should be accurate, a statement that every good teacher will admit without debate; but accuracy is often interpreted to mean completeness, and then the statement cannot pass unchallenged. To study ‘the dandelion,’ ‘the robin,’ with emphasis on the particle ‘the’, working out the complete structure, may be good laboratory work in botany or zoology for advanced pupils, but it is not an elementary educational process. It contributes nothing more to accuracy than does the natural order of leaving untouched all those phases of the subject that are out of the child’s reach; while it may take out the life and spirit of the work, and the spiritual quality may be the very part that is most worth the while. Other work may provide the formal ‘drill’; this should supply the quality and vivacity. Teachers often say to me that their children have done excellent work with these complete methods, and they show me the essays and drawings; but this is no proof that the work is commendable. Children can be made to do many things that they ought not to do and that lie beyond them. We all need to go to school to children.”

—“The Outlook to Nature,” L. H. Bailey.

“Weather and wind and waning moon,
Plain and hilltop under the sky,
Ev’ning, morning and blazing noon,
Brother of all the world am I.
The pine-tree, linden and the maize,
The insect, squirrel and the kine,
All—natively they live their days⁠—
As they live theirs, so I live mine,
I know not where, I know not what:⁠—
Believing none and doubting none
What’er befalls it counteth not,⁠—
Nature and Time and I are one.”

—L. H. Bailey.