Arbor and Bird Day Bulletin 



to the Oregon Towhees, the Chickadees, the American Coots, or the 

 gulls, although we could not refuse to listen to the wonderful spring 

 song of our beloved Rusty Song Sparrow. Puget Sound Homes and 

 Gardens, for February. 



THE ORNIRY, A REFUGE FOR WILD BIRDS. 

 (By Mrs. Granville Ross Pike) 



Bird students familiar with the facts, are distressed and alarmed 

 by the knowledge that all our beautiful and valuable American wild 

 life is rapidly vanishing. The greater part of their effort at present is 

 to arouse the public mind to a realization of this crisis. 



The most hopeful remedy suggested by practical observers of 

 the situation, is multiplication of game farms and game refuges on 

 state and private grounds. In these havens all species not already 

 depleted beyond the possibility of rescue will tend to increase and 

 recover their normal population. Song and insectiverous varieties 

 profit by such provision for safety, even when made primarily for 

 game birds, and thus all avian life receives a new lease. 



Experiments in this direction have long been successfully carried 

 on in various parts of the country. One of the largest and most ef- 

 fective of these is Blue Mountain Forest Park, with which we have 

 become familiar through the association with it for many years of 

 Mr. Earnest Howard Baynes. Another notable example is the farm 

 maintained by Mr. Henry Ford, near Detroit, Michigan. Here, pro- 

 tection and propagation of birds are carried on scientifically with 

 most encouraging results. 



If, then, it is through such methods that our precious wild life is 

 to be conserved, let us all share in the good work. We may not be 

 able to set aside from our landed estates twenty-seven thousand 

 acres, as in the Blue Mountain project; nor even twenty-one hun- 

 dred acres, as in the Ford farm, but almost every friend of the birds 

 can control some little spot in farm, garden, lawn, door-yard, or play- 

 ground. 



This article is prompted by the desire to persuade every such 

 person to make a little sanctuary of every such place, even though it 

 can be no more than a single shrub or bush, in which some hunted 

 feathered friend may rest a little in safety from its enemies. The 

 multiplication of these tiny shelters, linked together by their numbers 

 from home to home, from village to village, will form, in their aggre- 

 gate, vast oases in the wide desert of hostile conditions through 

 which every bird must now pass to live. In this way it is possible to 

 replace in part the great areas of prairie, swamp and woodland, 

 natural nurseries of bird life, which man by cultivation wrests from 

 their feathered occupants every year. 



