150 



Bird - Lore 



thrown out for him. He took particular 

 pleasure in concealing himself in thick 

 foliage and, when English Sparrows 

 gathered in a flock, emerging suddenly 

 and chasing them all off the place. On 

 February 26, Mrs. Senseman wrote that 

 the bird was still with them and doing 

 well. — B. S. BowDiSH, Demarcst, N. J. 



Yellow-Throated Warbler in 

 Brooklyn, N. Y. 



On April 28, 1917, while in Prospect 

 Park, Brooklyn, N. Y., in charge of a 

 group of fifteen members of the bird- 

 study class of the Brooklyn Institute of 

 Arts and Sciences, I heard, near the Rose- 

 Garden, an unfamiliar song and found to 

 my surprise that the songster was a fine 

 male Yellow-throated Warbler. Never 

 did an accidental visitor receive a more 

 positive identification and live to tell the 

 tale. Of the sixteen observers, fourteen 

 had opera-glasses and the other two 

 eight-power binoculars. All observed the 

 bird for half an hour in fine light at a vary- 

 ing distance of from ten to twenty-five 

 feet, and it was still in full view when they 

 left. Many had manuals and, mark by 

 mark, compared the printed description 

 or the colored picture with the bird before 

 them. The sharply defined yellow area on 

 the throat and breast, the black streaks 

 on the white flanks and sides, the white 

 belly, the head-marks, the gray back and 

 rump, and the white wing-bars were 

 carefully noted. The song, which was 

 repeatedly heard, was, as described, "like 

 the Indigo Bunting's, but shorter." While 

 there were several pine trees in the neigh- 

 borhood, the bird spent all of the time it 

 was under observation in the terminal 

 branches of deciduous trees, alternately 

 searching for food and singing. — Edward 

 Fleischer, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



Bird-Protection in the War-Countries 



In this distressing time of war, when a 

 large number of men from the farms is 

 being drawn into the battlefields, there is 

 coming a new realization of the economic 



value of wild birds and a larger effort to 

 protect them. 



The Royal Society of England has pre- 

 pared a special leaflet, 'Birds, Insects, and 

 Crops,' asking the help of all readers in the 

 protection of the birds and of the crops in 

 cultivation. Every bird is being regarded 

 in the light of its value to man. Even 

 the famed Skylark has been put under sus- 

 picion as a destroyer of crops of corn and 

 wheat, but it has been proven by the 

 examination of thousands of stomachs 

 that it does not feed on wheat, corn or 

 corn-shoots, but rather on weed seeds and 

 insects, thus doing beneficial work. 



In France the bird-protection party 

 includes men from every station and 

 class — statesmen, writers, sportsmen, 

 teachers, and agriculturists — men who 

 have the vision to see in bird-protection a 

 means of saving agriculture from the 

 threatening dangers. They are working to 

 check the illegal shooting in the close 

 season, the merciless destruction by 

 gunners, the netting of migrants and 

 killing of seabirds as a summer pastime 

 off the coast of Brittany and Normandy. 



The friends of birds are constantly 

 increasing in Australia also. They are 

 trying vigorously to stop collectors from 

 killing off the very rare birds of the coun- 

 try. The Gould League of Bird -lovers, 

 numbering 60,000 members, is just begin- 

 ning to put up nesting-boxes, food-tables, 

 and baths for the wild birds in the state 

 schoolgrounds, parks, and public gardens. 

 A military camp is located in a beautiful 

 park in Victoria, and some of the men of 

 the medical corps, in their leisure hours, 

 enjoy watching the birds and feeding them 

 from the hand. 



Russia, too, is taking more active inter- 

 est in the cause of bird-protection and is 

 inquiring of England about bird-legisla- 

 tion. Some preserves have been set 

 apart for the birds. The Department of 

 Agriculture has founded one of great 

 importance in Siberia, where, in 1895, the 

 slaughter of birds was responsible for the 

 plague of locusts and cutworms which 

 threatened famine for the country. Mos- 

 cow still has a famous bird-market. A 



