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GARDENERS' CHRONICLE 



before I had eaten myself?" Shall we be chided for 

 espousing the cause of that bird? 



The house sparrow (English sparrow) is a terrible 

 enemy of our song- birds. It fights all of them, tears up 

 their nests, breaks their eggs, and kills their young. 

 Besides that, it is a pest; it is dirty, noisy and quarrel- 

 some. I am satisfied that I never could have been as 

 successful as I have been in attracting the song birds 

 around my home, lovely "Bird Lodge," if I had not 

 eliminated this "rat of the air," with my sparrow trap. 

 T. Andre IMottu of Norfolk, Virginia, recently wrote me 

 that he caught 11,241 sparrows with this trap. This is 

 the record catch, although I have several friends who 

 have caught from three to five thousand of these pesky 

 little varmints through the use of my sparrow trap. The 

 sparrow- is a grain-eating bird and should be classed with 

 the chicken. They are good to eat, tasting like squabs 

 and there is no reason why -we should not eat them. They 

 have eaten sparrows in the old country for centuries. 

 There are millions of them and everyone eats its weight 

 in grain every day. Everything has its uses. Don't be 

 prejudiced -. the sparrow has been used for food in Europe 

 for years and sold for seven cents apiece during the war. 

 Sparrows in a pie have very often been mistaken for 

 squabs. 



There is no douljt. if facilities are provided, that you 

 will be astonished at the number of beautiful song birds 

 that can be attracted to your grounds, and the best part 

 of it is, that many of them will stay with you all Winter. 

 The cardinal grosbeak, for instance, will not migrate if it 

 can find food and shelter. The birds that do migrate re- 

 turn to the same houses year after year and with their 

 natural increase, your grounds will soon become a 

 veritable bird paradise. Make friends with the native 

 song birds. They richly repay for the trouble you take 

 in looking out for their interests. Many who have only a 

 little patcli of city garden have induced song birds to live 

 with them, through my advice. The birds make no dis- 

 tinction between the rich and the poor. 



In connection with this article, illustrations are shown, 

 how birds may be properly cared for. The houses should 

 be left up the year round, as they furnish building sites in 

 the Summer and shelter in the W^inter. Many birds stay 

 with us in the north all the year; others go south chiefly 

 because they cannot find food and shelter during the Win- 

 ter in the northern states. Many si:)ecies will go, of 

 course, for love of warmth and sunshine, but a good 

 many birds can be kept north all Winter if they are pro- 

 vided with food and shelter. I have proven this after 

 years of effort. 



It has added a great deal to my pleasure to have the 

 birds stay with me, some of them only a month or two 

 longer than they used to stay, some of them all Winter 

 long. Few jjeojjle realize how many birds .starve to death 

 during the sudden cold snaps, ])articularly when the .snow 

 covers the ground. Well stocked food houses and shel- 

 tered feeding tables are life-saving stations. I wish all 

 realized this ; I know everyone would lend a hand in feed- 

 ing birds and would teach the young folks to look out for 

 feathered friends. It seems to me that boys and girls of 

 our bustling times are not taught to be as thoughtful as 

 we used to be. This is not a peevish cry of "Those were 

 the goofl old days." I believe we are going lo have still 

 better days for our song birds, because the American peo- 

 ple are becoming alive to the great need we have for our 

 native birds and the wonderful service these birds give in 

 protecting our trees, shrubs, grains and fruits from harm- 

 ful insects. 



My suet cake, made of suet, sunflower seed, my grain 

 mixture, and ground nuts, grinding shell and all (they 

 must have the shell for roughage), is the most attractive 



and necessarv food for the birds that stay all Winter, being 

 a balanced ration which contains everything necessary to 

 sustain bird life. The birds will require very little or 

 no attention in the matter of food during the late Spring 

 and Summer, but early in the Spring and in the Fall and 

 \\'inter it is well to take care of them. My experience 

 has proven to me that two feeding devices are better than 

 one. The larger and stronger birds will invariably drive 

 away the smaller and weaker ones, perhaps at the very 

 time they really need food. 



Purple martins, bluebirds, wrens, flickers, or gold- 

 winged woodpeckers, white bellied or tree swallows, 

 chickadees, nuthatches, and flycatchers are the most easily 

 attracted to man-made houses. They are, also, among the 

 most valuable, most sociable, and most delightful of all 

 liirds. There are dozens of other birds, however, which 

 are won by setting out bird houses. Among the three or 

 four hundred birds which live in my garden are robins, 

 scarlet tanagers, orioles, cardinal grosbeaks (red birds), 

 cat birds, brown thrashers, warblers, flickers, rose- 

 breasted grosbeaks, humming birds, juncos, song spar- 

 rows, wood thrushes, vireos, cedar waxwings, downy and 

 red-headed woodpeckers and many others. Some of these 

 insist upon building their own nests : but they benefit by 

 my bird baths, and build nests on my shelter shelves, 

 or "invitations to nest," as I call them. They all know 

 they are welcome. One song bird attracts another, know- 

 ing they are protected from their enemies. 



I have always been interested in birds ; even as a boy 

 T Imilt wren, martin and bluebird houses and studied their 

 habits. Talk about the busy bee, it is not to be compared 

 with a mother martin feeding her four young ones. It 

 is amusing to see their mouths wide open. The mother 

 starts feeding with number one and with careful rotation 

 number two is fed next ; then number tljree, and when 

 number four's turn comes, its mouth is surely wide open. 

 After it has been fed the mother will start all over again 

 with number one, w-hich by the way, is always the smallest 

 and weakest bird. How do I know this? Because I 

 watch them with powerful binoculars which bring them 

 up so close that I can see their every move. 



To win birds for the beauty and sweetness they add 

 to our lives is really a great joy and one that renews 

 itself each year ; it becomes a source of greater and greater 

 pleasure every year to live with the birds. I loved and 

 worked for the birds for many years before I appreciated 

 fully their value to the world as protectors, God-sent, 

 against the devouring insects. 



NOTES FROM AN OLD COUNTRY GARDEN 



(Coiitiiuu-il Irani /'if.^r 2'Jii) 



of frost and are not particular as to soil. It is said that 

 they will even do with lime, an element to which most 

 of their natural order object, and though they like sun 

 they will put up with and berry freely in semi-shade. 

 Propagation is easily afl^ected by division, suckers, cuttings 

 or seed. We use these shrubs as dwarf ornamental hedge- 

 rows, groui)ed in beds or about the margins of shrubberies 

 or woodland ])atlis and for forming a carpet, or under- 

 growth, for the taller brooms, labin"nums, hawthorns and 

 other flowering shrubs that are apt to get leggy. 



If we read intelligently and seriously the signs of the 

 times, we come to the conclusion that religion, not as mere 

 l)rofession, but as believed and practiced agreeably to the 

 teachings of Him who spake as never man spake, is the 

 sujjreme need of our generation. And it shall be true of 

 every generation to "the last syllable of recorded time." — 

 77/c XaliniHil Piclorial Moiilhlv. 



