36 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



are governed with any idea of protecting the ground cover and undergrowth, 

 there is no wonder that the birds of the thicket community are becoming 

 rarer except in certain favored localities. 



Pruning of orchards and shade trees. In other connections we have 

 spoken of the disastrous effects to bluebirds, chickadees and Downy 

 woodpeckers of cutting every dead limb from shade and fruit trees, but 

 this practice is likely to become more uniform and the only salvation 

 for those species which nest in hollows and dead limbs, is the erection 

 of artificial nesting sites by State authorities and by the individual land- 

 owners. The government officials of Germany that control the forest 

 land are beginning to give more and more attention to the erecting of 

 nesting sites, finding that woodland birds are necessary to hold in check 

 the tree-destroying insects which sometimes do widespread damage to 

 the young forest trees, and many private landowners in various parts 

 of the world have demonstrated the utility of erecting hollow limbs and 

 boxes for the woodpecker and bird box communities. It is a noticeable 

 fact that those birds are usually species which are most useful in holding 

 the pests of forest trees under proper check, and the day can not come 

 too soon when bird protection societies as well as the State officials who 

 have conservation questions in their hands, will erect nesting limbs and 

 nesting boxes for all species that can be thus encouraged, to counteract 

 the wholesale destruction of nesting sites which results from the ' ' cleaning 

 up " in orchards, parklands, shade trees and State forests. 



The spraying of trees. The necessity which is increasing year by 

 year of holding various insect pests in check by spraying with poisons, 

 has resulted in some destruction of bird life, although the opinion is usually 

 held that this danger is largely exaggerated; but when we consider the 

 fact that dead birds in any case are very rarely seen, the fact that we 

 find so few which have been killed by spraying operations is not at all 

 surprising. Dead birds are quickly put out of sight by cats, dogs and 

 skunks, or buried by the sexton beetles and other scavengers. Sick birds 

 almost always fly away to some shelter, an instinct which is universal 



