374 HOMING ^YITH THE BIRDS 



share consistent with his means and location. It 

 is always possible to give a high degree of protec- 

 tion to the birds that seek your good graces when 

 they locate their nests on your premises. Shield 

 them from cats, squirrels, other birds, and wilful 

 children to the best of your ability. Put up all the 

 boxes, old gourds, cans, dippers, any protective 

 nesting shelter you can furnish for them. A pro- 

 thonotary warbler, a thing of gold and bubbling 

 song, passed close by a ten-dollar bird box, when 

 it nested in my bait can on our dock last summer. 

 The birds do not in the least object to tin cans and 

 the crudest boxes or hollow limbs placed for their 

 use. If you have a small waste place, where a 

 handful of hemp seed can be sowed in spring and 

 seed raised to add to suet and meat bones for 

 the birds of winter, that will be a great help, since 

 the seed is very rich in oil and a warming food for 

 birds. 



Neltje Blanchan especially requested me to urge 

 in the writing of this book that every bird lover 

 plant a few, low growing, thickly leaved evergreens 

 for winter sleeping quarters for the birds, among 

 the larger trees, junipers and red cedars, among the 

 smaller, the cypresses and arbor vitae, these to be 

 put in the places deemed most sheltered and con- 

 venient for winter quarters. To this, I add the 

 plea that in every convenient corner you set a 

 Russian mulberry as old as possible to begin with, 

 and in a short time your complaints against the 



