A VALUABLE NEW BIRD BOOK' 
By T. Gilbert Pearson 
HIS is one of those books, too 
Als rare in our libraries and always 
noteworthy, in which the author 
writes from actual experience. It tells 
us what he has really done, and what he 
knows because he has tested his knowl- 
edge — a practical book in the strictest 
definition of the term. Mr. Baynes for 
many years has been celebrated among 
bird lovers for his extraordinary ability 
in making friends with wild birds, and 
for the ingenious and highly successful 
devices by which he has induced them 
to become his guests at his home in a 
New Hampshire village. Birds not only 
visit his garden as they do other places 
where they have ordinary privileges, 
but they also stay there, get ac- 
quainted with the owner and his family, 
and acquire and exhibit a confidence 
that seems marvelous to outsiders. 
Everyone who sees this desires to know 
how he does it; and the book is in large 
measure devoted to such explanation, and 
to a description of the various best ways 
to invite and to entertain his “ guests.” 
Hence it abounds in practical descrip- 
tions, with diagrams and photographs 
as helpful illustrations of the various 
forms of nesting-boxes, shelters, feeding- 
stations, drinking-fountains, bird baths 
and the like, that he has found most 
successful. His success however im- 
plies an intimate acquaintance with the 
nature and habits of his winged visitors 
— their several temperaments, foods, 
breeding habits, enemies and prejudices; 
and these he communicates freely for 
the reader’s aid. 
One feels as he reads the succes- 
sively interesting pages, that Mr. Baynes 
is also communicating somewhat of the 
affection, and the untiring enthusiasm, 
How To ENTERTAIN 
106 1k 
1Witp Birp GusEstTs, 
‘THEM. By Ernest Harold Baynes. 
Dutton and Company, New York City. 
with which he has studied and wooed 
the This enthusiasm is well 
known to the thousands of persons who 
have heard him lecture on birds, and it is 
birds. 
not surprising to learn that he has long 
conducted a model bird club 
home town, at Meriden, New Hamp- 
shire, and has been the founder of scores 
of bird-study and bird-protection clubs 
in all parts of the country. This matter 
forms an important part of his book. 
He tells us why every community should 
have a bird club and how to set it going 
and keep it going. 
The bird club he considers very im- 
portant because the most serious enemy 
of the birds is man, and the most serious 
factor of man’s enmity is ignorance. If 
in his 
it were known more widely and generally 
what this country has already lost and 
is yearly losing in losing its birds, what 
the people themselves and their chil- 
dren are daily losing, there is hardly a 
man, woman or child in the United 
States who would not be codperating 
eagerly in the movement for bird con- 
servation. How many people know 
that a conservative estimate of the 
birds killed by domestic cats each year, 
in Massachusetts only, is 700,000; that 
there is much more “sport” to be had 
in gaining the friendship of the birds 
than in hunting them, and that the 
actual need of our wild birds for suitable 
nesting places and for food in winter, is 
very imperative and very easily supplied? 
Mr. Baynes tells of these things in in- 
teresting detail, and then he says to 
his readers in big letters, “If there is not 
already a bird club in your neighbor- 
hood, organize a bird club!” 
Altogether Wild Bird Guests is a book 
that should be in the hands of every orni- 
thologist and conservationist; as well as 
on the shelves of every school library. 
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