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BIBB NOTES ANB NEWS. 



is a happy feature of a park. As to birds, it 

 is often surprising how many varieties may be 

 found near even an " industrial centre." The 

 yearly writing of essays will give the children 

 interest in protecting birds of park and suburb ; 

 the yearly tree-planting (easily arranged where the 

 Corporation give facilities) will afford them a direct 

 concern in the cult of the beautiful ; the yearly 

 Festival may be made to bring the country spirit 

 into the town. And the whole training will 

 assuredly implant in the rising generation that 

 love for nature which cannot co-exist with an 

 acceptance of dirt and dreariness and tawdry 

 squalor. 



HOW WE ATTRACTED THE BIRDS 

 TO A NEW GARDEN. 



By Mrs. W. B. Gerish. 



{Written for the Autumn Conference of the 

 R.S.P.B., 1905.) 



Less than six years ago it was our lot to have to 

 leave the old house in which we lived in Hoddesdon, 

 with a quaintly beautiful garden, and to seek a fresh 

 home. We found a house in close proximity to the 

 railway station at Bishop's Stortford, which had 

 been recently built, and required considerable 

 structural alteration and additions to make it 

 suitable for our requirements ; so that by the time 

 we came to take possession the garden, and the 

 additional land we had acquired, was devoid of all 

 vegetation save weeds, and the refuse of building 

 operations, not a tree or a shrub anywhere. We 

 missed the abundant bird life to which we had been 

 accustomed, and the difficulty was to know how 

 best to attract the creatures of the air to our desert. 

 Gardening operations speedily made the place 

 more presentable, nevertheless, little else but 

 sparrows paid it a visit, and although sparrows are 

 undoubtedly interesting and useful, we felt the loss 

 of the wrens, finches, robins, thrushes, blackbirds, 

 etc., that thronged our old garden. We planted 

 a large number of trees, both ornamental and for 

 fruit, but as the former were chiefly of the dwarf or 

 espalier variety, and the latter would necessarily 

 take many years to be of use for nesting purposes, 

 we cast about for some other plan to induce the birds 

 to both visit and make their homes with us. So we 

 set to work to construct rustic arches across the 

 paths at intervals, purposing covering them with 

 ivy. We found that by planting two or three roots 

 to each shaft and supplying plenty of moisture in 

 dry weather, the ivy made rapid growth ; in a 



couple of years it had completely covered several 

 of the arches. We then discovered, to our dismay, 

 that the oak and elm " toppings," of which they 

 were constructed, were in an advanced stage of 

 decay, and this determined us to rebuild them of 

 the refuse of the brick kilns, locally known as 

 " bats." 



Up to this time we had been able to attract a 

 good deal of bird life by means of the ponds which 

 we had constructed for their benefit and as means 

 of saving the soft fruit. These have proved highly 

 successful ; it will perhaps be remembered that as 

 far back as 1901 Mr. Gerish contributed a paper to 

 the Conference upon the subject of " Watering the 

 Birds." We, however, found that wooden tubs were 

 a constant source of trouble owing to decay, and 

 replaced them with structures of brick, thickly 

 cemented inside. These not only looked better 

 but were easier to keep clean, and with a clump of 

 water-iris in the centre (the roots inserted in a pot 

 sunk a few inches below the surface), are a feature 

 of interest in the garden. We also made a 

 miniature lake in the centre of our smaller lawn, 

 and constructed small islands of cork, affixed to a 

 piece of stout wood, and fastened to the shore by 

 means of a wire cable. This pond is, we think, 

 visited more than all the others — the reason 

 probably being that it is so much more conspicuous. 



But to return to the arches. These are easily 

 constructed by anyone and at small cost. It is 

 necessary to have a firm foundation, and in order 

 to have some guide towards keeping the shafts 

 upright it is desirable to erect a piece of iron rod 

 seven to eight feet in height. The bats are built 

 round this, the centre being filled in with stone, 

 glass, or brick rubbish mixed with cement. It is 

 advisable to build slowly and allow the material to 

 set well. The arch can be made of stout iron bands, 

 curved (procurable of any blacksmith for less than 

 a shilling each), which are cemented into the tops 

 of the shafts, and then covered with tiles cemented 

 together and plastered with a thin layer of the same 

 material. 



The work of transferring the ivy was one of some 

 difficulty, but in the course of a few months the 

 new growth was amazing, and by the following 

 summer several of the arches were completely 

 covered. At first only two or three birds took 

 advantage of these for nesting purposes, but the 

 following year every arch had at least one nest, 

 several two. The robin, wren, chaffinch, thrush, 

 and blackbird alike utilised either the spaces in the 

 brickwork or the interlacing branches of the ivy 



