OUR SUMMER BOARDERS — THE BIRDS. 253 



happy family. The red-heacled woodpecker was the boss of all 

 of them. For a while he seemed to enjoy sitting on the perch 

 to keep the jays away, but in August I counted five jays at once 

 on the table with two woodpeckers, and the boss old wood- 

 pecker on the perch just calmly looking down to see the picnic 

 going on. The jays and grackles liked the bits of boiled sweet 

 corn so well that they left the standing ears in the garden almost 

 untouched. The jays thinned out the Longfield apples just about 

 right, taking the wormy ones only — I suppose because these col- 

 ored up first. We never saw a robin 6r a brown thrush on the 

 table, but there were plenty of them around, and they would pick 

 up from the ground the crumbs that the others spilled overboard. 



Although our place is near the water's edge, on Lake St. 

 Croix, and has many old trees and some shrubbery that the birds 

 like so well for shelter and nesting, the fruit and other things 

 they helped themselves to in the garden was a mere trifle, except 

 the green peas. Of these the orioles took about ten per cent. One 

 day my wife thought she would keep them away from at least 

 one row, so she covered it carefully with burlaps and old aprons. 

 The birds thought this was done for their benefit, just to fix it so 

 they could work in security from cats, so they crawled in under 

 the coverings and finished that row in great glee, leaving the 

 other rows pretty much alone for a while. I presume the cover- 

 ings will be put on next year, a row at a time, to protect the 

 other rows in the same way. 



One after another our summer boarders have mostly gone 

 away. The last thing we did for them before leaving home our- 

 selves for the winter was to pick the remaining sweet corn in the 

 garden and place it on the terrace walls for the winter supply 

 of the blue jays, where I presume it will be divided with the gray 

 squirrels. 



I want to say here for the credit of Prescott, that it is a rare 

 thing now to see a boy going about carrying a slingshot or a gun 

 to annoy the birds within our city limits. We have no Audubon 

 club in town, but our principal and teachers of the public school 

 took up the matter of bird protection a few years ago and have 

 succeeded in establishing a public sentiment in favor of it. 



Just §ne thing more, briefly. I think the scarcity of the little 

 song birds at our city parks and homes is mainly due to an in- 

 sufficient food supply, the electric lights and the noise. These 

 timid, delicate birds cannot stand the glare and racket, and so 

 seek homes elsewhere. Your robins and your blue jays can, 

 and they remain. 



