REASONS WHY 59 
HOUSING AND FEEDING 
“When places become thickly settled, and villages 
grow into towns and towns into cities, one of the first 
things that troubles the father and mother of a family 
is to find house-room, a suitable place to live, that shall be 
healthful for the children, and yet not be too far from the 
father’s work, and many and many a family have had to 
move to inconvenient places because such a home could 
not be found near by. 
“Strange as it may at first seem, our little fellow-citi- 
zens, the birds, have this same trouble. 
“Tn an open, half-wooded farming country there are 
plenty of nesting haunts, and running brooks and ponds 
for the birds who need water by their homestead. But 
presently perhaps a railway comes by; the land is bought 
up and the wocds cut down for railway ties, the brush is 
cleared from old pastures and they are turned into house- 
lots. Old orchards, like ours here, are done away with, 
and everything is ‘cleaned up.’ 
‘This is as it should be, and a sign of progress; but where 
are the birds that Nature has told to nest in tree hollows, 
like the Bluebird, Chicadee, the Tree Swallow, Downy 
and Hairy Woodpecker, and the jolly Yellowhammer, 
to find homes? 
“You will often hear people say, ‘It is too bad the Blue- 
birds are dying out ;’ but if somewhere about the place you 
will fasten a hollow log or a square bird-box with a single 
round opening in it to a high fence-post or to a pole set up 
on purpose, you will soon see that the Bluebirds have not 
died out, but that they have been discouraged in their 
house-hunting. 
