220 PROPAGATION OF WILD BIRDS 



liking. It is a good plan to have at least a simple box with 

 a few chambers ready for possible arrivals which otherwise 

 might not linger on the premises. 



An Instance. Arthur W. Brockway, of Hadlyme, Con- 

 necticut, after hearing a lecture by E. H. Forbush advising 

 the putting up of boxes for martins, several days later saw a 

 pair in his yard, and put up a single box on a pole. The 

 pair took possession and raised a brood. Next spring sev- 

 eral came. More boxes were put up and they all nested 

 there. Each year there were more, and last season, about 

 eight years from the beginning of the attempt, about one 

 hundred were nesting, making, it is said, probably the larg- 

 est colony in Connecticut. Unfortunately, about the first 

 of July, 1 914, a long, cold rainstorm killed a considerable 

 part of the colony, a calamity which with the martin, 

 unhappily, is apt to occur, in Northern States, every few 

 years, wiping out many a hard-earned colony. On the 

 Henry Ford farm near Detroit the martins are splendidly 

 started, and in 19 14 there were four large colony houses 

 well occupied. The purple martins at Hadlyme feed their 

 young chiefly on the larvae of the dragonfly, taken from 

 the meadows of the Connecticut River, going a couple of 

 miles to and from their chief hunting-grounds. It may be 

 that this species would give preference to locations in the 

 vicinity of meadows and marshes. 



Covered Shelves. Several species which have become 

 accustomed to shelter their nests under buildings — the 

 robin, phoebe, and barn swallow — sometimes will use a 

 nesting-box of different construction from the others. This 

 style consists merely of a shelf or a cup-shaped receptacle, 

 with a roof over it, and open on one or more sides. The 

 song sparrow has been known to use such a device open 

 on all sides. It has been suggested that catbirds and 



