CONSERVATION OF GAME BIRDS. 555 



grounds. Where birds are not molested or shot at they make 

 themselves at home in man's neighborhood. In India, where 

 animal life is held sacred by the greater part of the population, 

 numerous birds, large and small, frequent cities, and build 

 their nests about the buildings and in the yards and gardens. 

 In some European cities the Storks build their nests on the 

 housetops. The American representative of the Stork family, 

 the Wood Ibis, has been extirpated from a large part of the 

 United States and driven to the inaccessible swamps of the 

 south. We can readily imagine what would happen to one of 

 these great birds should it venture to even perch on one of 

 our housetops. Birds have little fear of houses and people 

 provided the people do not molest them. Wild-fowl come 

 into ponds in cities where protected. Ospreys build their 

 nests in farm-yards in Rhode Island. I once saw three Summer 

 Yellow-legs about a puddle beside a street in the city of 

 Somerville, Mass. Shore birds have increased very much in 

 numbers on the populous, much-frequented beaches of Swamp- 

 scott, Lynn and Nahant since shooting has been prohibited 

 there. They would frequent them more than they now do 

 were they not molested by dogs, cats and children. There 

 are practically no houses on most of the salt marshes of Mas- 

 sachusetts, except a few gunning camps, and it is the shooting, 

 more than the houses or the people, that drives the birds 

 away. 



If no shooting or molesting of beach birds were allowed in 

 summer it would not be many years before large troops of 

 Sandpipers and Plover would be seen running along the most 

 populous beaches. 



The Shortening of the Open Season. 



A few of the older gunners and sportsmen attribute the 

 decrease of game birds to the shortness of the present shooting 

 season. They believe that the hunters so throng the woods 

 in a short season that the birds have no chance. This theory 

 lacks logic. It cannot apply to wild-fowl or shore birds, as 

 the season for them always has been long. If carried to its 



