lSl2 



The Cornell Reading-Courses 



robins, cowbirds, catbirds, thrashers, towhees, and even scarlet tanagers, 

 can be attracted in this way. The last named birds, however, prefer 

 a shelf stocked with cake and doughnut crumbs not so near the window. 



The regular summer birds find plenty of natural insect food and do not 



respond so readily to feeding. The woodpeckers, however, will continue 



to visit the suet all through the summer, and will even bring their young. 



Although most of the summer birds do not respond to feeding, 



some of them are easily 

 attracted about the home 

 by placing nest boxes in 

 the trees or on the house. 

 There are many firms that 

 manufacture these boxes, 

 building them in the form of 

 miniature houses, hollowed 

 limbs, and the like ; but any 

 one with a knife and a 

 hammer can make boxes 

 acceptable to the birds. * The 

 wren here illustrated deserted 

 a somewhat elaborate box 

 fastened in a tree, for this 

 rather crude one fastened to 

 one of the posts on the' 

 porch within arm's reach of 

 the door. Boxes of this 

 general form are entirely 

 satisfactor}\ The opening 

 should be made on one side 

 toward the top, not at the 

 bottom. For wrens this 

 opening should be an inch 

 and a half in diameter (the 

 size of a half dollar) ; for bluebirds, tree swallows, and crested 

 flycatchers, about two inches; and for flickers and screech owls, larger 

 proportionately. Purple martins nest in colonies, and for them only, 

 more than one compartment should be built in the box. A large 

 house made of a barrel or half a barrel, capped with a conical tin 

 roof and divided into sixteen or more compartments, is quite as 

 satisfactory to the martins as the more elaborate boxes made in imitation 

 of dwellings. The openings should be about two inches in diameter. 



* Detailed directions for building nesting boxes can be found in Bird Houses and How to Build Them, 

 Farmers' Bulletin 609, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 



Fig. 42. — House wren building nest in box provided 



