Boys, Guns, Birds and Trees 



THE relation between forestry and the lad whose 

 father arms him with a toy rifle may not be appar- 

 ent at first glance. There is. however, a pretty 

 close relationship in some localities and under certain 

 circumstances. Concrete instances point the moral of a 

 tale better than can be done by general statements, says the 

 Hardwood Record of Chicago. Everybody with any 

 degree of information concerning the balancing forces 



ants of the woods has increased or decreased, depending 

 on the season, for a long time ; but it has never stopijed. 

 Some birds present a nmch more inviting target than 

 others to the boy with a rifle. None attracts more than 

 the woodpecker. Even the children of the wild Indians 

 killed woodpeckers as their first adventure with the bow 

 and arrow. Though some species are wild and shy, they 

 are not difficult to approach if the hunter is skilful. 



SOFT MAHLl; K 



]il> BY A\TS 



The birds which ordinarily would have eaten the ants which killed this tree were 

 driven away by boys. The building in the background is the Central School of 

 Eyanston, Illinois. What an object-lesson for teaching children to protect birds 

 this unsightly stump presents! 



of Nature knows that but for birds, the insects would 

 devour all the vegetation from the face of the world. 

 For some years past the small boys of the North Shore 

 (some parts, but perhaps not all parts) have been abund- 

 antly armed in spring, summer, and fall with toy rifles 

 and have gone forth to shoot without much restraint from 

 parental or municipal authority. These guns are not all 

 harmless toys. Many shoot cartridges and can properly 

 be classed as deadly weapons, while others are air guns 

 and are less harmful, but are none the less nuisances. 

 Boys no more than seven years old have been furnished 

 with such guns and have gone out with boys of larger size 

 to shoot birds. The war against the feathered inhabit- 



Tke Tree.s' Best Friends 



Trees have no Ijetter friends than the woodpeckers. 

 Every forested region has one or more species. The 

 ivory-billed woodpecker holds chief jilace in southern 

 forests, the hairy woodpecker in the far north, the black 



tuR l.Al.K OF BIRD I'Ku 1 Ei. 1 iuS 

 Boys with rifles and sling-shots keep all the birds away from this section of 

 Evanston. Illinois, and as a result this yellow oak has fallen a victim to ants 

 and other insects and associated fungus which the birds would have destroyed. 



ant-eating woodpecker on the Pacific coast ; while the 

 central hardwood region is the favorite home of the 

 downy woodpecker (Picns piibcsccits) . It is black and 

 white, sometimes with a red feather or two, and in size 

 is rather smaller than a robin. Some call it a sap-sucker. 

 It may occasionally indulge in a sip of sap from small 

 holes which its bill punches in a tree's bark, but its sub- 



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