CHAPTER XXIX 



Birds in the Garden 



Best Type of Bird Houses — Feeding the Birds — Berry-bearing Shrubs 



Mr. Chas. Livingston Bull, than whom no 



one is better acquainted with the birds and 



their habits, furnishes us excellent directions 



for making them tenantable homes, as follows: 



The bluebird and wren are the easiest to 



satisfy as to the outward appearance of the 



house; probably nine out of ten native birds 



hving in artificial nesting sites are bluebirds. 



The Bluebird Almost any box, if only it has a space at least 



pSK\n° bi?d Ufe'gei four and one-half inches high by the same 



orally" width, and a length of seven inches or more, 



^°" BuUetii' k^^ir""' with a hole about one and one-half inches in 



diameter, preferably round, at the end and not 



too low down in that end, with some sort of perch just below it, will 



please the bluebird. As to outside finish, the more it looks like some 



natural object the more sure it will be to attract the Uttle bluecoats. 



The most successful bluebird box of which I have knowledge was a 



section of a hollow hmb, in which a woodpecker had cut a Uttle round 



hole into the cavity. This limb, about seven inches in diameter, had 



been sawed from the tree and a section about two feet long containing 



the cavity, bad been cut out and wired to the branch of an old Pear 



tree. This was used every year by a pair of bluebirds, and most years 



two broods were raised. Think of the thousands of fruit worms and 



curcuhos and other insects that went to feed the broods in that nest 



year after year! 



I have duplicated that nest a number of times simply by cutting a 

 section of a branch or small trunk, seven or eight inches thick and a 

 foot long, boring a hole with an inch and a half bit half way through, 

 near one end, then hollowing out a chamber, either by sawing a slab 

 off one side, which is tacked or wired on again after the chamber 

 (about 5x5x8) is hollowed out, or by sawing a section for a cap two 

 inches thick from the end farthest from the entrance hole and then 

 drilling or turning out the hollow and closing the end with the cap, 

 carefully tacked on. This house should be hung horizontally. 



If a box is to be used as the foundation of a bluebird house, cover it 

 with bark or make it of slabs with the bark on, or at the very least, 



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