longer at night and, before the month ends, an hour in the morning, in which to 

 see those birds we have, and, a significant fact, the sun rises full upon the old 

 apple-tree feeding-place, that has lain under the black shadow of the house-cover 

 these two months gone. This may seem a very slight happening, but it makes 

 an earlier call to breakfast ; for, even if suet be still as solid as low temperature 

 can make it, it is certainly more palatable if the Downy, Chickadee or Nuthatch 

 that visits it has the sun on his back. In this lies a hint to the placers and main- 

 tainers of either bird-houses, winter-shelters or feeding-stations ; location has more 

 to do with success than is usually supposed. For feeding-stations, a top-shelter 

 from snow and rain, with side wings or some other sort of wind-break, is abso- 

 lutely necessary, together with the selection of a spot that lies in the sun all of 

 the brief winter days. 



Nesting-houses should have a reasonable degree of protection from the sun 

 and, especially should the doors be protected from the noon and afternoon rays ; 

 but, on the other hand, houses for winter shelter should also be sun-baths. 



Of the forty species of birds that I once recorded as having nested in the 

 home garden some fifteen years ago, a number have dropped away for lack of 

 suitable nesting-sites ; though, on the other hand, some eight or ten have added 

 themselves to the original list, bringing it up to fifty. 



I am now trying, by supplying certain of the deficiencies, to make it possible 

 for these to return ; and, in one instance, the success was positively startling. 



For many years we had a Screech Owl brood as a matter of certainty ; then 

 certain old trees and nooky out-buildings disappeared, and with them the Owls. 

 This autumn in making some Bluebird boxes of old shingles, with top and bottom 

 of strong new wood, I had a length of pine plank an inch and a half thick to 

 spare. This was roughly fashioned into a couple of boxes one foot square with 

 a hole three and a half inches in diameter rather nearer the top than the bottom. 

 A single shingle fastened on the roof was so angled as to keep rain or snow from 

 the opening. In looking for a suitable spot for the houses, two Norway pines 

 seemed promising. Each had lost twenty feet of the top by wind and lightning, 

 and the branches, in one instance, had stretched up as if to hide the scar. The 

 boxes were placed on the tree-tops, the twelfth of December, to the tune of very 

 skeptical remarks by the man who did the climbing, to the efifect that I might get 

 a gray squirrel to look at the box, but, as for anything as leery as an Owl, it would 

 look like a trap — new wood, too. Here a sniff came in for punctuation. But 

 then, the box was of an awkward shape to get between the thick branches, and 

 it was a sticky rough bit of climbing which may be considered as tinging his 

 opinion. 



Box No. 2, on the taller tree, stood out well from the branches and caught 

 every possible ray of sunlight, while the other was in a thickly wooded place 

 shadow, except for a short time in the afternoon. 



Three days later, the doubting Thomas called me. He was chopping wood 

 under box No. 1, to which he called my attention by an upward jerk of his thumb. 

 There, completely filling the doorway, was the head of a rust-red Screech Owl, 



413 



