lives — they protect the very food upon which we hve. It is then every man's 

 duty to do something to help these delightful little friends of mankind. 



Don't imagine because you live in the city or busy town that you cannot win 

 native birds around your home. There are birds near you and you will be 

 surprised how readily they discover an attractive house so placed that they can 

 with safety take it as their own and while I myself live in a suburb of Chicago, 

 I am really in the city, as my home is just over the line and as many as 1,500 

 autos an hour pass my house at certain hours of the day. I have only one acre 

 of ground, yet I have 54 bird houses, numerous shelters, food devices, baths, 

 etc.. in this garden and have from 300 to 500 native birds living on my property 

 all the time every summer. I have from 50 to 75 birds who stay with me all 

 the year around. Birds do not freeze, as many people suppose — they suffer and 

 die from hunger. If they could get something to eat they would stand any cold 

 in the winter, as their little hearts beat just twice as fast as ours. By providing 

 them with shelter and food devices I am enabled to keep them with me the year 

 around. 



There is another most important matter with reference to attracting birds — 

 that is, the planting of the right kind of trees and shrubs. One can just as v/ell 

 plant species which will furnish a continuous supply of food. They are just as 

 hardy and really more beautiful than other shrubs, as they have a double beauty 

 — first the bloom, and then the berry, which the birds eat and thrive on. 



In addition to the great host of cultivated fruits, trees, shrubs, and plants, 

 which are found more or less in every residential back yard, we have the native 

 wild forms of the same, which are largely used in landscape work, because of 

 their ornamental berries. Our present study is not for pleasing effects to the 

 eye of man, but what attracts and feeds the birds. 



We naturally are first reminded of the wild crab and plum and the two forms 

 of wild cherry trees with the numerous family of bush-cherry like the choke- 

 berry, sand cherry, and the American and European bird cherry. The great 

 variety of thorn have representatives in many sizes of fruit and different periods 

 of blooming, but they all flag the birds when in fruit. 



The mulberry trees fruit first and are always located by the birds, who hold' 

 daily receptions in their branches while the fruit lasts. The American and 

 European juneberry, which is called shad-berry in the East, as it blooms when 

 the shad run in the Delaware River, is a tree with berries high out of the reach 

 of those in search of blueberries, to which it is quite similar in appearance and 

 taste. 



The brilliant festoons of all the barberries are an easy mark for the birds. 

 No one loves to see the red, black, or white currants carried off' by the winged 

 visitors, but do not begrudge them at any rate the ornamental forms of the 

 currant, such as the Golden Flowering. Gordon's Red Flowering and the Wild 

 Black, whose fruit, though not equal to the cultivated, easily appease the birds' 

 not over fastidious taste. 



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