2 Massachusetts Audubon Society 



THE YEAR AT THE MOOSE HILL BIRD SANCTUARY 



By 

 Harry George Higbee, Supt. 



During the past eleven months we have entertained about thirteen 

 hundred visitors at the Moose Hill Bird Sanctuary at Sharon. 



The season has been a remarkable one for the growth of vegetation, 

 and a most excellent one for the observation of flowers and plant life. 

 Many of these have been especially beautiful and profuse in their bloom- 

 ing and have interested many of our visitors. Upward of three hundred 

 varieties of trees, shrubs, ferns and flowering plants may be found grow- 

 ing here under natural conditions, where they are easily available for 

 study. 



As with the birds, studying, identifying and card-cataloguing these 

 various species has been continued, although much time has necessarily 

 been taken for the guidance and enlightenment of our visiting friends. 



Eight new birds not noted here last season were added to our Sanc- 

 tuary list this year, making a total of one hundred and six species ob- 

 served here thus far. About two-thirds of these are resident species, 

 breeding within the sanctuary grounds, and the nests of many have 

 been under observation during the summer. A few of these are of 

 special interest. 



Eight families of house wrens were successfully raised in our nesting- 

 boxes about the dooryard and orchards. Fifteen pairs of tree swallows 

 used similar boxes of varying types, most of these being attached to the 

 top of ten-foot poles. A family of hairy woodpeckers — rare nesters 

 in this vicinity — was brought forth from its secluded home in a swamp 

 maple beside the Ferny Trail. 



A Canadian warbler is believed to have nested here, along the edge 

 of Shadbush Swamp, as it was several times observed in this vicinity in 

 the month of June. 



Woodcock sang nightly in the ma ting-season, and their wonderful, 

 ecstatic love songs could be heard through the golden afterglow about 

 our orchards and among the alder swamps. 



Bob-whites and ruffed grouse brought forth and jealously guarded 

 their timid broods among the wilder parts of the sanctuary, a nest and 

 thirteen eggs of the latter species being discovered beneath the shelter 

 of a thick grove of pines about a mile from the farmhouse. 



In this same grove, high up in top of one of the big pines, a curious 

 and wise-looking young barred owl sat daily at the edge of his home — 

 which was an old, remodelled crow's nest — and blinked down at the 

 wood folk below, or welcomed with apparent disapproval his "queer- 

 looking friends" who sometimes climbed to the top of the tree to make 

 him a visit. 



