How to Attract the Birds 



ACCUSE NOT NATURE, SHE HATH DONE HER 

 PART; DO THOU BUT THINE" 



Woodcock on nest showing protective colouring. The beak is ever stuck 

 under twigs and straws till it looks much like them 



Certainly, birds banded together for mutual pro- 

 tection as instinctively as ever men did, yet through 

 men have come the chief failures of their flocking 

 habit. Enormous flocks of wild pigeons, consisting 

 of millions of birds, so many that they darkened 

 the sky, were a not uncommon sight in this land 

 of liberty less than fifty years ago. But because 

 pigeons nested in vast roosts, they were easily netted 

 and slaughtered wholesale, until it is difficult to ob- 

 tain a single pair of these exquisite birds for museum 

 specimens to-day. Audubon found auks in numbers 



no 



