2 Massachusetts Audubon Society 



BIRDS AS WAR- WINNERS 



In all the fight that the country is putting up against autocrat aggres- 

 sion, it is well not to forget our allies the birds. He who encourages two 

 birds to live on his land where but one bird lived before is making a good 

 •stroke against the enemy. The war is to be won as much in the reserve 

 trench which is the farmer's furrow as it is on the firing line. Beans are 

 to count as well as bullets, and to produce record crops of potatoes is as 

 important as to provide record outputs of shells and hand grenades. 



Therefore, he who cultivates his fields is only half a farmer if he does 

 not cultivate the birds that go with the fields. The reason is plain to any- 

 one who knows birds. It is only the ignorant farmer who still believes the 

 robin does harm by taking a bite of a strawberry now and then. Far more 

 likely the bird is hunting for cutworms and grubs that do great harm to 

 the strawberry plants and the principal reason why he takes fruit is because 

 he is thirsty. It will be well to cultivate the robin along with the bean. 

 Cutworms wreck the bean crop but the robin wrecks the cutworms. 



One of the simplest ways to cultivate the robin is to put out a bird bath 

 for him. A shallow pan filled with water will do or a cement pool can 

 readily be made. Fill this from a garden hose or from a pail. Sweep it 

 clean occasionally. The birds that drink there will be likely to let the fruit 

 alone, and the presence of the pool will attract birds that otherwise would 

 never visit the place. A robin shelf, which is a sheltered platform put on a 

 post or in the crotch of a tree, may encourage the robin selecting his nesting- 

 site and a dish of mud put out by the bird bath will furnish material for the 

 foundation of the nest. Do these things and you will help fight the Germans 

 with increased garden crops. 



The robin eats not only earthworms and cutworms but grasshoppers 

 and caterpillars of many kinds and is especially fond of the March fly larvae 

 that are so injurious to the haycrops. In a like manner, birdhouses for the 

 wrens, bluebirds, tree swallows, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers and all 

 other hole-nesting birds are a step forward in farm efficiency. Make the 

 entrance hole to the birdhouses an inch and a half in diameter. Put it high 

 under a projecting roof, and almost any form of box will do for the rest of 

 it. Put the birdhouse up on a post in the open if possible or in a lone 

 tree whose shade is not too deep. The birds just mentioned are particularly 

 efficient in clearing the garden of insect pests that often wreck the crops. 

 The house wren destroys caterpillars, bugs, spiders, grasshoppers, locusts, 

 webworms and injurious beetles of many kinds. The chickadee will in one 

 day destroy six to eight thousand eggs of canker-worm moths. The 

 chickadees are also eating the gypsy moth eggs with similar efficiency. The 

 tree swallows are great fly and mosquito catchers. They also destroy flying 

 ants, beetles and weevils. The woodpeckers save the trees from the very 

 injurious leopard moth and scores of other wood-destroying insects. Nor 

 are the hole-nesting birds the only efficient first-aids to the gardener. The 

 food of the meadowlark is mostly grasshoppers. Twenty-two per cent, of 

 the food of the bluejay consists of grasshoppers and caterpillars. And so 

 one might go through the lists of birds from the smallest songsters to the 

 crows, hawks and owls and find scarcely one but what in his diet is of much 

 use to the farmer. Those birds which take toll from our fruit trees, as has 

 already been suggested, may be led away from them by giving them plenty 

 of water to drink and especially by planting other fruits of which they are 

 more fond than our garden varieties. For instance the Russian mulberry 



