350 Bird - Lore 



people. There is continual demand for bird talks, especially among the dif- 

 ferent schools and throughout the country, and there is a growing demand for 

 bird-pictures and information concerning our native birds. 



Last spring the manual training pupils of the Portland schools made 

 several hundred bird-houses. An exhibition of these was held in Portland and 

 attracted wide attention. Many of the houses were sold and the money turned 

 over to the pupils. The interest in building bird-houses, and bird protection 

 in general, has grown to such an e.xtent that State Superintendent of PubHc 

 Instruction, L. R. Alderman, has made it one of the requirements during the 

 coming year that all the school children in the state shall build bird-houses. 



REPORT OF CAPT. M. B. DAVIS 



During the present year, the Texas Audubon Society probably doubled its 

 activities, in some of the divisions of bird life, coming very near mastering 

 the situation. We began the present year with a series of illustrated lectures, 

 delivered in far west, middle west and central Texas, and we belie\-e we accom- 

 plished very great good. The annual columns of transitory birds, such as 

 Robins, Plover and Curlew, were being crushed out, and ^'ery acti\'e measures 

 were applied to the case. All that we could do, with the means at our disposal, 

 was done, and during the present year our lectures have been delivered in all 

 of the places at which the migrants halted during the winter season. 



I consider that the greatest achievement accomplished is the close affilia- 

 tion we have made with the Texas Farmers' Congress. Under the powerful 

 patronage of that organization, we have been popularly received in all of the 

 farmers' institutes in the state. The effect of our active campaigning is plainly 

 to be seen in the great increase in wild-bird life in the meadows, the forests 

 and the fields, all over the state of Texas. 



In the early part of the present year, we lectured before the State Nursery- 

 men's Association, following that lecture up with lectures before the Corn 

 Growers' Association, the Cotton Planters' Association and the Citrus Fruit 

 Growers' Association. Our lecturers have been warmly received wherever 

 we have appeared. During the session of the Farmers' Congress last July, 

 Mrs. Davis and myself, with our stereopticon slides, charts and leaflets, 

 bivouacked with the farmers and their wives on the spacious grounds of the 

 Agricultural and Mechanical College. Not only did we lecture to the main 

 body, but in all of the divisions of the Congress, as each division holds a meet 

 ing independent of the main body. 



Beginning in April last, we kept half a dozen gentlemen and ladies in the 

 field lecturing for the protection of all bird life, but paying particular attention 

 to the aigrette-bearing Heron. In a complete survey of a large area of the 

 coast land, we located a colony of plume-bearing White Egrets, and also 

 large colonies of other Herons. We ascertained that the lumbermen and 



