324 



Bird- Lore 



Hirds; liil)li()graphy [very brief] of Works 

 Pertaining to Birds and the Out-of-Doors. 



Full instructions, with drawings and 

 specifications, for the construction of bird- 

 houses for various species, of baths and of 

 feeding-stations are given. The list of 

 trees and shrubs bearing natural food for 

 birds may be consulted profitably by one 

 with grounds of any size to plant, and the 

 chapter on 'Aquatic Plants' is for those 

 owning ponds which could be made attrac- 

 tive to wild ducks. 'The Establishment 

 of a Sanctuary' shows how much more 

 economical and efficient for true conser- 

 vation purposes is a place kept entirely 

 free from hunting than one where game- 

 birds are raised by hand in large numbers 

 only to be shot. 



It is with the author's statements 

 regarding so-called 'vermin' that we have 

 a very serious quarrel, and we fear that, 

 issued as they are by a 'protective' asso- 

 ciation, they will do much harm. To 

 class so splendid a bird as the Great 

 Horned Owl as 'vermin' is as wide of the 

 mark as it would be to apply that term to 

 the Chickadee. Owls, Hawks, Crows, 

 Jays, squirrels, weasels and foxes are not 

 vermin; they are important, interesting, 

 beautiful, and often useful forms of wild 

 life, whose extermination would be as sad 

 a loss as that of the game on which to some 

 extent they prey. A pair of majestic 

 Great Horned Owls is certainly worth 

 more than any toll they may take from the 

 numbers of hyphenated, mongrel Pheas- 

 ants, beautiful and desirable in reasonable 

 numbers as the latter are, and rabbits in 

 abundance will turn the Owls' attention, 

 as w^ell as the foxes', from game-birds. 

 We should strive to preserve the natural 

 balance between the creatures of prey and 

 their quarry; in certain circumstances the 

 ranks of the former must be carefully 

 thinned, but to urge their general and sys- 

 tematic destruction is essentially vicious. 

 To kill all our Sharp-shinned and 

 Cooper's Hawks, to save the small birds 

 they eat, would be hardly less of a crime 

 than to allow them to multiply till they 

 threatened seriously our small-bird popu- 

 lation. England is held up to us as an 



example — a horrible example, we call it — 

 of a country with thousands of imported 

 Pheasants, and Red Grouse moors so over- 

 stocked that nature has to resort to disease 

 to keep the birds in check, and where most 

 Hawks and Owls, and the beautiful native 

 Jay and Magpie in large areas, are almost 

 extinct. ."The Great Horned and the 

 Barred Owl are both very destructive to 

 bird-life, and should be shot wherever 

 found." This sickening sentence shows an 

 ignorance — amazing in the secretary of a 

 state fish and game association — of the 

 feeding-habits of the Barred Owl. This 

 highly beneficial species has long been 

 well known to live mainly on mice, shrews, 

 moles, large insects, frogs, etc.; the bird 

 portion of its diet is insignificant, and very 

 rarely includes poultry or game. The 

 would-be conservationist should remember 

 that the extermination of any native 

 creature is neither necessary nor desirable 

 for the proper conservation of any other. — 

 C. H. R. 



The Ornithological Magazines 



The Auk. — The July issue opens with 

 'Field Notes on Some Long Island Shore 

 Birds,' by J. T. Nichols and F. Harper. It 

 is a careful record of the habits of the com- 

 moner species frequenting our sand 

 beaches and marshes, and the authors have 

 been unusually successful in obtaining 

 photographs of many of these birds, which 

 most of us think of as being most restless 

 and timid. The flight-poses are particu- 

 larly instructive. 



The second part of an article by J. S. 

 Huxley on 'Bird- Watching and Biological 

 Science' is virtually an appeal for care- 

 ful note-taking of bird behavior, espe- 

 cially courtship, with immediate classi- 

 fication in a card index. The modern 

 idea that everything is susceptible of 

 indexing is applicable within certain 

 bounds, but the novice would better 

 beware of a system that may bring him in 

 an avalanche of cards before he has 

 learned to record his field experiences in a 

 coherent manner. Careful ornithologists 

 have for years past kept record of many of 



