132 PROTECTION OF BIRDS. 



There will be no danger for many years to come that 

 our lands will be so thoroughly stripped of their native 

 growth of herbs, trees, and shrubs as to leave the birds 

 without their natural shelter in some places. The danger 

 that awaits them is that they may be driven out of par- 

 ticular localities, and the inhabitants thereby deprived 

 of the presence of many interesting songsters. Wher- 

 ever the native species are abundant, we find a consid- 

 erable proportion of cultivated land, numerous orchards, 

 extensive fields of grass and grain, interspersed with frag- 

 ments of forest or wildwood, well provided with water- 

 courses. Where these conditions are present, the famil- 

 iar birds will be numerous if they are not destroyed. If 

 these cultivated lands lie in the vicinity of pastures 

 abounding in thickets and wild shrubbery, fragments of 

 wood and their indigenous undergrowth, we may then hear 

 occasionally the notes of the solitary birds, many of which 

 are superior in song. Wild shrubbery and its carpet of 

 vines and mosses form the conditions that are necessary 

 for the preservation of these less familiar species. 



The shrubs that bear fruit are the most useful to the 

 birds, especially as they are infested by more insects than 

 other kinds. The vaccinium, the viburnum, the cornel, 

 the elder, the celastrus, and the small cherries are abun- 

 dant where there is a goodly number of the less famil- 

 iar birds. If we clear our woods of their undergrowth 

 and convert them into parks, we do in the same propor- 

 tion diminish the numbers of many species. No such 

 clearing as this is favorable to any of the feathered race. 

 But the clearing and cultivation of the land outside of the 

 woods, if it be done rudely, leaving bushes on all barren 

 knolls and elevations, is beneficial to all kinds of birds by 

 increasing the quantity of insect food in the soil. A nice 

 man at the head of a farm would do more to prevent the 

 multiplication of birds, than a dozen striplings with their 



