SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Address all communications to the Editor of the School Department, Nationa 

 Association of Audubon Societies, 141 Broadway, New York City 



BIRD-CITIES-OF-REFUGE 



1">HK Mary M. I^inery Bird Reserve, as described beyond by Professor 

 Benedict, opens a wide field of work not alone for those living in cities 

 and the smaller towns, but even for the dwellers in remote country 

 districts. 



Especially does it suggest work for the pupils of the country school, and 

 the opportunity for the setting apart tracts of land by those who have it 

 to spare, and desire to perpetuate the name of an intli\'idual or a family in 

 connection with such work. 



A library is a good thing for any community, but quite as necessary, if 

 not more so, is the spreading open to the young a permanent page of nature's 

 book, wherein they may read for themselves. 



Now is the time to act. Every day the cities and manufacturing towns 

 are growing more solidly packed with human beings; the outlying brush 

 lots and woodland being stripped for fuel, and the many other uses of w^ood 

 while the land itself is taking on a prohibitory value. Now is the time to 

 secure these oases in what may be called the desert of civilization. In many 

 places it is now or never. 



There is only one point on which I should differ with Professor Benedict, — 

 that of necessary size. He mentions a bit of ground twenty feet square, fenced 

 with poultry-wire, as being large enough for a successful reserve. To my mind, 

 this is too small. A half acre is little enough to give the inmates that sense of 

 freedom and the possibility of at least the partial self-support that separate 

 the wild bird from the inhabitant of the large aviaries of zoological parks. 



Also, birds of different species do not care to be too closely associated 

 in nest-building, and need elbow-room, so to speak. Anything less than a 

 half-acre becomes a bird-cage, and, to be of any real value, the city of refuge 

 should be upward of an acre. 



One favored season, a number of years ago, before a tire caused by a rail- 

 way locomotive, had destroyed much dense underbrush, I listed forty species 

 of birds as nesting in my home bird city of eight acres. Since then, causes 

 wholly outside of the preser^'e itself have reduced the number of species nesting 

 by one half, although the number of individual birds remains about the same. 

 Of this I am convinced, that, in spite of varied methods of feeding and pro- 

 tection from cats and \-ermin, many desirable si)ecies of birds must have 



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