Massachusetts Audubon Society 7 



Wild birds, of course, consider all men to be their natural enemies. It has 

 been mighty hard for me to convince them that I am their friend. How- 

 ever, that conviction now seems to be spreading among them rapidly. Hun- 

 dreds of new birds come here every year. I can always tell when a strange 

 bird arrives. It seems very shy. Not so with the old timer, however. He 

 comes sailing in as fast as he can, honking a welcome and proceeds to stuff 

 himself on corn. 



"I have one mallard duck which was hatched and raised by a domestic 

 fowl in 1912. She has now migrated and returned to me each spring, and 

 has raised four families in five summers — two eights and two nines. 



"My friend, to see my pets return to me year after year for food and 

 protection after they have evidently shied around and outwitted thousands 

 of hunters who hid in ambush for them, and to see wild geese come home 

 bleeding and with legs broken, makes me feel that my work is really worth 

 while." 



AN ENGLISH BIRD SANCTUARY 



A recent visitor to the Brent Valley Bird Sanctuary, which is a bit of 

 primeval England about seven miles from Paddington, a London suburb, 

 thus writes of the birds there: 



I heard much about the nesting habits of the birds from my companion, 

 Mr. Wilfred Mark Webb, the eager naturalist who has been for so long the 

 custodian of the birds' interests. Birds like to build round an open space so 

 as to fly freely in and out, and it was round about the glades that the nests, 

 artificial and real, were thickest. Birds are not at all difficult to please in 

 the matter of a site. If you give them a beautifully-made box they will 

 build in it to save trouble, but an old kettle lodged in a crook of a bough 

 was quite good enough for a family of wrens, and some robins did well one 

 season in the fragment of a bucket left on the ground, and another set of 

 robins were quite happy in an abandoned beer-can. I saw an illustration of 

 the decorative sense of a robin that took possession of a box. The nest only 

 occupied one corner of it, and the robin filled up the rest of the space with 

 a pattern of leaves. There was a thrush that ignored the nesting-box alto- 

 gether and built on the top of the roof. Once there was a chiff-chaff that 

 coveted a box where a hedge-sparrow had already built and laid her eggs. 

 She proceeded to build her own nest on the top of the lot, but carefully 

 avoided covering the eggs of her predecessor, having them as it were on the 

 door-step. 



Now and then rare birds that very seldom build near a city take up 

 their abode in the Brent Valley Sanctuary. The tree-sparrow, which used to 

 be unknown in Middlesex, became common when the boxes were installed. 

 Kingfishers have been seen flashing by the lake; snipe and woodcock have 

 been seen too, but these have never built. The long-tailed tit has built its 

 beautiful domed nest ornamented with silk from the cocoons of moths and 

 the egg-coverings of spiders. 



Not only the birds but all the wild creatures that haunt the woodlands 

 have thrived in the Sanctuary. Stoats, weasels, and hedgehogs flourish in 

 the undergrowth, and the grass snake is not absent from this paradise. 

 Primroses and ferns, at one time nearly disappearing, have been protected. 

 the wood anemones come out in spring, and in their season the bluebells 

 shine under the trees. Some interesting trees are found away from the thick 

 company of the oaks. Among these I noted the wild service tree, that has 

 such a pleasing red flower, the guelder rose, and the wild pear. Is all this 

 to go for some factory? F. P. 



