Field Notes 45 



pellets, etc., in and below the tree when first seen. One could go 

 there at any time during the day and find them in that tree, even 

 on the same branches, ready for an interview. 



Finally, I would like to report one of the periodical incursions 

 of the Goshawk. They were shot here in numbers during Novem- 

 ber and December. I received one from Orland, twenty miles south 

 of Chicago, and one from Michigan, and Mr. K. W. Kahmann, the 

 taxidermist, received more than fifty specimens alone. They were 

 from the whole northern part of the state and as far south as 

 Springfield. 



C. W. G. ElFRIG. 



River Forest, Illinois. 



A CAT-PROOF SHELTER. 



Those who try to encourage birds to feed and nest around their 

 homes are at once confronted by two serious obstacles, both in- 

 troduced by man himself, and both greatly interfering with good 

 results; I allude to house-sparrows and cats. While gun, trap, and 

 poison will more or less reduce the numbers of sparrows and tend 

 to drive them from premises where such measures are in use, it 

 is impossible of course to prevent their occupying places where 

 other birds go, and from annoying and fighting with privileged 

 guests. Cats, however, can be absolutely barred from any given 

 area by proper safeguards. 



The more I study the habits of cats in relation to bird protection, 

 the more strongly I feel that cat-proof fences should be in much 

 more general use, and I am in hopes my description of the small 

 shelter maintained last summer will induce others of the Wilson 

 Club to try the same experiment. I had the problem of protecting 

 at least a part of our yard from depredations by a neighbor's cat, 

 a cunning and destructive hunter, but immune, by neighborhood 

 reasons, from the extreme penalty it richly deserves. A strong 

 spring-gun, (usually called an air-rifle) is very effective in day- 

 light visits, one hit preventing further calls for some time, but 

 there remained the probability of unopposed prowls at night. Part 

 of our yard was already enclosed by an ordinary four foot wire 

 fence on tubular steel posts. I found cats even when running from 

 a rifle seemed unable, or very reluctant, to climb this fence, in- 

 variably escaping through overhanging trees. Following out this 

 idea, I erected a higher wire fence around a group of shrubbery, 

 and experience has proved it a thoroughly cat-proof shelter. 



My shelter is circular, about thirty feet in diameter, enclosed by 

 a small-mesh woven wire fence, hung loosely and with some over- 



