But what did I promise to tell you of to-day, children ?" "Citizen Bird, you said," replied Nat, "though I don't think I quite know what you mean." "What does _citizen_ mean ?" asked the Doctor, smiling.
"I think it is a person who lives in a city, but birds aren't people and they don't live much in the city." "You are right in one sense, my boy, but the word _citizen_ has also a far wider meaning.

Do you know what it is, Olive ?" But Olive was not sure, and the Doctor asked her to go to his study and look for the word in the big dictionary.
In a few minutes she returned with a slip of paper from which her father read: "Citizen--a member of a nation, especially of a republic; one who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it." "Now, if you listen carefully I think I can prove to you that every bird you can find is such a citizen of this country, and show you why we should protect him.
"I told you the other day how the body of a bird was planned and built to fill a place no other animal could take.

Thus by his habits and character every bird fills a place as a citizen of our Republic, keeping the laws and doing work for the land that House People, with all their wisdom, cannot do.

Every such fellow-animal of ours, besides having eyes to see with, and a brain which, if it does not tell him as many things as our brains tell us, yet teaches him all that he need know to follow the laws that Heart of Nature has set for him, has the same feelings and affections as ourselves.

Parent birds love each other and their little ones, and often lose their lives in trying to protect them.