Betty Goers, age 10, of Victor, N. Y., for her question:

How many different birds are there?

Birds, most of them, are fascinating charmers. Each variety has his own way of making a living, singing a song and bringing up his family, All this coping with life is done successfully without any help or even any suggestions from us, Perhaps this is one reason why bird watching is such a popular hobby. It is certainly fascinating to discover how well the frail‑looking, feathered creatures manage to cope with things all b y themselves. What's more, their beauty is worth a second look and many of their songs are worth hearing.

There are still many secrets of the bird world, often right in our own back yards. This is why bird clubs gather and sort endless bits of information sent in by countless bird watchers every year. This is how, bit by bit, our knowledge of the bird world grows and becomes more accurate.

But surely, you may think, all the different birds have by now been at least counted. And so they have. Then there must be a definite number of different birds, for in any scientific study we expect to be precise and exact. Yet we can say that there are 8,600 different birds and 30,000 different birds, Both figures are correct.

To prove this, we must see how the birds are classified scientifically. To qualify as a bird, an animal must hatch from an egg and wear feathers. He must have wings instead of front legs., a beak end no teeth, If he qualifies as a bird, he belongs to the class Aves. The big class is subdivided into smaller orders.

The birds in an order have certain features in common. In one order belong the ducks, geese and swans.

All are swimmers with webbed feet and broad flat bills„ The hawks,eagles and vultures belong in another order. They all have strong wings, hooked beaks and claws.

The order of perching birds contains more than half the members of the bird world. Each has a. tail with 12 feathers, three front toes and one long back toe. The order is subdivided into families. The silky waxwing is in one family, the robin redbreast is in another family.

The family is subdivided into genera... which is the plural of genus. One genus includes the robin and a few thrushes, Each different member of the genus is called a species. The number of species should give us the number of different birds in the world. There are 8,600 species in the class Aves. But Mr. Robin and his pals claim that there are some 30,000 different members of the bird world.

A bird may be differently marked, depending upon where he lives. The robin of the east coast has a breast of solid rusty red. The robin of the west wears a. dark necklace around his red throat. We call the two robins variations or subspecies. If we count all the subspecies we shall find 30,000 different birds in the world,