Song-Birds in Europe and America 71 



days compel our songsters to seek shelter and repose soon after sun- 

 rise, their singing being mostly done during the early morning hours, 

 when people are sleeping most soundly ! 



In many thinl}^ populated sections of our country thousands of 

 bird songs are rarely heard by human ears. In the vicinity of all 

 our cities, as well as most if not all of the smaller towns, the laws 

 protecting song-birds are practically a 'dead letter,' the surrounding 

 fields and woods being almost daily raided by the professional pot- 

 hunter, the bird snarer, or boys with guns or bean-shooters.* In 

 England, on the other hand, birds have for many generations been 

 rigidly protected, until, in their almost absolute immunity from the 

 perils to which they are in this country chiefly exposed, a much larger 

 number have become accustomed to have confidence in mankind. 

 Laws protecting all kinds of song-birds, and their nests and eggs, 

 are there enforced with a strictness which is absolutely unknown in 

 any portion of the United States ; and, in numerous carefully po- 

 liced public parks and thoroughfares and extensive private grounds, 

 which ample wealth and long cultivation have made a veritable 

 paradise for birds, they live in full knowledge of their security, with 

 little to check their natural increase. The extreme scarcity of pred- 

 atory birds and mammals, which have been for a long time nearly 

 exterminated throughout England, has also assisted to bring about 

 that affluence of bird-life which is so justly the pride of the English 

 people. 



The same abundance of bird-life could easily, by the same means, 

 be secured in the United States. If anyone should doubt this, let 

 him try the experiment and he will soon be convinced. I have done 

 so for ten years, and the result was entirely satisfactory from the 

 beginning, although the area upon which I could experiment was 

 necessarily limited to my own grounds (only about half an acre in 

 extent), and the birds have had much to contend with in the abun- 

 dance of English Sparrows which continually harass the more domes- 

 tic species, the frequent destruction of their eggs and young by red 

 squirrels from an adjacent pine woods, and assassination by their arch 

 enemies, the house cat and small boy, to which many birds that 

 my wife and I had learned to know and love have fallen victims. 

 All suburbs are more or less a "dumping ground" for superfluous 

 city cats ; ours is no exception to the rule, for these worse than 

 useless creatures have at times fairly swarmed in our neighborhood. 

 Of course we have done the best we could to protect the birds from 

 these enemies, and with some success. We have also done all that 



*This is certainly true of the suburbs of Washington, where the police force is not sufficient 

 to properly patrol the outskirts of the city. 



