FOREWORD 



IT is a fact well known to field naturalists that in the heavily 

 forested lands of North America comparatively few birds are to 

 be seen. The conditions of life are such that ordinarily far more 

 are found where a portion of the land is under cultivation. The 

 diversified crops, weeds, plants, fruit-bearing shrubs and trees, 

 with their attendant hoards of insects found in and about culti- 

 vated regions all tend to make more favorable living conditions 

 for wild birds. In sections, therefore, where open fields are inter- 

 spersed with thickets, grown-up fence rows, orchards and small 

 areas of woodlands, and the country traversed with streams, one 

 will generally find bird life more abundant. Then, too, in the set- 

 tlements men have destroyed many of the smaller animals and 

 snakes that prey upon birds. Any species of wild life provided 

 with abundant food and insured against an excessive loss from the 

 depredations of its enemies will increase in numbers. 



Undoubtedly the farm-land birds of North America have greatly 

 increased since the discovery and settlement of the continent. 

 Only those that could be, and have been, commercialized have 

 suffered particularly from the hands of man. Passenger Pigeons 

 are extinct because they were shot, trapped and netted to extermina- 

 tion for food and for sport. Many game birds have been threat- 

 ened with a like fate. Egrets and some other so-called birds of 

 plumage, are rare to-day because of past demands for their feathers 

 by the millinery trade. Despite the fact that numerous species 

 have largely increased over their former numbers there is yet the 

 greatest need for their still further increase. Our rapidly growing 

 agricultural interests have resulted in vastly enlarging the varieties 

 and numbers of injurious insects that prey upon the growing crop 

 and the harvested products. 



The National Association of Audubon Societies is intensely inter- 

 ested in this phase of conservation and wishes to use every legitimate 

 means of bringing the subject of protecting our economically valu- 

 able birds again and again to the attention of the public. This 

 book, being Volume II of the series which it is hoped to continue, 

 is being brought out and offered at cost in the hope that it will 

 further stimulate interest in American bird protection. 



In this Volume there may be found discussions of the lives and 

 habits of birds representing eleven of the seventeen Orders inhabit- 

 ing North America. 



GILBERT PEARSON. 



