STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 23 



the right place. The roof should project out over the opening 

 to keep the snow and rain from getting in. A perch is not 

 necessary, but some birds like it. And then the box may be 

 deep enough so that the cats cannot very easily claw the young 

 birds out. They have a habit of doing that. 



It is most interesting to have a bird house so situated that 

 you can watch the home life of the birds. That is what we call 

 the observation box, which I have used for about forty years. 

 We had such a nesting box at Wareham. This box is set on a 

 sill of an upper window. Looking from the window out you 

 see a door opening down on to the window sill and behind the 

 door a pane of glass is set ; then there is a roof which fits over 

 to shade the entrance hole, which is made an inch and a quarter 

 in diameter for the chickadee. We put a little meat or suet or 

 something of that sort during the winter on the window sill, 

 and in the spring my little girl came to me and said, "A pair of 

 little birds, chickadees I think, are carrying sticks and feathers 

 and things into that box." "Now," I said, "you watch those 

 birds and wait day after day until you see them carrying in 

 insects or anything like bugs ; then you can open the box." 

 Never was any box watched more closely than that, and by and 

 by, two or three weeks later, she came to me in great excitement 

 and said, "They are carrying in bugs." Then we opened the 

 box and saw the nest with five little young birds in it. After we 

 had watched them for a long time, we came one day to photo- 

 graph them. The little ones were about ready to fly and as soon 

 as we opened the glass one of them felt the fresh air and away 

 he flew, right into a pear tree and the others commenced to fly 

 out. Four of them alighted upon me, and then the father bird 

 came to the roof and the mother bird to my hat and they talked 

 and coaxed until away the little birds went. We did not get 

 that picture because we were short of plates. Later we caught 

 these little ones and put them on a stick but we could not make 

 them stay to have their pictures taken for when we got four on 

 it seemed that about five would fly off. We finally gave it up 

 and took the only two that would stay. 



I have said that almost anything will make a bird house. We 

 used a lot of old tin cans. These were all bird houses, used 

 by a bird or squirrel except an old tin teakettle. They did not 

 seem to care for that, or else it was put in the wrong place. A 



