CHAPTER V 



MISCELLANEOUS 



Nesting Material, Dust Baths, Gravel, and Lime. In 

 city parks and on city lots it may frequently be 

 desirable to provide nesting material besides nesting 

 places. While our towns at large are mostly painfully 

 dirty, certain streets, parks, and lots are kept clean. 

 In such places the birds will readily make use of horse 

 hairs from old mattresses, bits of threads, rags, tufts 

 of wool, cotton, flax, pieces of hay, straw, and other 

 similar material. A Baltimore oriole that was in need 

 of material for nest building tried hard to pull his supply 

 of strings out of a minnow net, which lay only a few feet 

 from a boat-house. When some strings were placed on 

 the ground, he used them at once. The same bird re- 

 paired his nest, after a storm had badly damaged it. 



Many birds like to take a dust bath even in winter. 

 Common road dust or pulverized garden soil is good 

 for such use, and a supply of it should be provided 

 before the ground freezes at the beginning of winter. 

 Set shallow dust receptacles to their rim into the 

 ground in sunny places, protected like drinking foun- 

 tains. All gallinaceous birds are fond of dust baths. 

 I have also seen the brown thrush enjoy one, and have 

 repeatedly observed the house sparrows trying to bathe 

 in dust on dry ground that was frozen hard and solid. 



