PROTECTING BIRDS AS AN ACT OF PATRIOTISM 



1065 



In view of the world shortage of food, this bird 

 sanctuary campaign will be urged more strongly than 

 ever the coming summer. Already the subject of bird 

 sanctuaries is no longer new in millions of homes and 

 the way has been well paved for further propaganda 

 along this or other educative lines for the conservation 

 of wild life in its various forms. The bird sanctuary 

 movement will be kept up and carried on with zeal 

 and enthusiasm until the whole country is thoroughly 

 converted to the necessity of bird protection. 



The whole campaign has been conducted along broad 

 lines. The right of the sportsman to enjoy his favorite 

 recreation wherever game is sufficiently plentiful to 

 allow of pursuit, governed by the ethics of true sports- 

 manship, is fully recognized. There has been no desire 

 to antagonize the true sportsmen, but rather an eiifort 

 has been made to enlist their co-operation. Thus when 

 a land owner has refused to make his property a sanctu- 

 ary unless shooting thereon was to be permitted during 

 the open season, that land owner's attitude has been 

 respected and effort has been concentrated on others in 

 that vicinity who have no such objections. 



The whole theory underlying the campaign is the 

 need of individual farms or areas of land adapted to 

 bird life, scattered through every district, made into 

 sanctuaries as breeding grounds for game as well as for 

 the strictly insectivorous birds. It has been pointed out 



Photograph by Brown Brothers 



THE CUCKOO 



Much given to eating the large hairy caterpillars which live in colonies 

 and are most destructive to leaves of trees and plants. 



Photograph by Brotvn Brothers 



THE CATBIRD 



Ants, bettles, caterpillars and grasshoppers constitute three-fourths of 

 its food. Its vegetable diet is obtained from the berries of wild vines. 

 Poison ivy and sumach are a part of its diet. 



to sportsmen that such sanctuaries will, in years to come, 

 mean more and better sport. The overflow from these 

 sanctuaries is bound to stock the remainder of the 

 country. 



While there have been some very large sanctuaries 

 established, notably one of 50,000 acres, stress has been 

 laid on the value of the small sanctuary of only a few 

 acres and the advantage of securing as many of these as 

 possible. A large number of small sanctuaries is of 

 greater value than one or two very large sanctuaries be- 

 cause of the greater number of people immediately in- 

 terested. Ten sanctuaries of five acres each means the 

 immediate personal interest in the movement of ten 

 families, against the interest of only one family in the 

 case of a single sanctuary of fifty acres; thus an etifort 

 has been and is being made not only to secure as large 

 an acreage as possible but to interest in the work as 

 great a number of people as possible. 



Taking it altogether the lesson to be learned from this 

 preliminary crusade for nation-wide bird sanctuaries is 

 that the people of our country can be depended on to 

 respond liberally and enthusiastically to any practical 

 conservation movement or constructive reform affecting 

 the general good when the object is made sufficiently 

 clear to them. Continued educational work such as has 

 been done in this instance should be taken up by our 

 national magazines and extended so that other national 

 interests, which need only intelligent direction, may be 

 crystallized into permanent constructive action. 



"jM AJOR D. T. MASON, recently returned from military service 



abroad, is doing special work in the Treasury Department, at 



Washington. The Bureau of Internal Revenue, finding difficulty 



in administering the Income and Excess Profits Tax \nvf with 



familiar with forest industries, as many of operations involved 

 include mining, gas, oil and those dependent upon the forests for 

 their raw material, and Major Mason, with the title of "Forest 

 Valuation Expert," has been placed in charge of the organization 



regard to the so-called "Wasting Industries," has turned to men of this work. 



