360 USEFUL BIRDS. 



for missiles in the same spirit in which such young savages 

 murder the toads about a pond. Something is wrong with 

 a system of education under which such wholesale abuses of 

 useful creatures are possible. 



There are many indirect ways in which man reduces the 

 numbers of birds. Marshes are drained, and the sustenance 

 of marsh birds destroyed. Reservoirs are made, and the 

 haunts of land birds overflowed. The building of dams for 

 manufacturing purposes holds back the waters of rivers, so 

 that heavy rainfalls in the breeding season flood the nests of 

 many marsh birds, destroying eggs and young. Thus Eails, 

 Bitterns, and Marsh Wrens are drowned or driven away. 

 Thousands of birds and their nests are burned by fires in 

 the woods. Swifts are sometimes suffocated in numbers by 

 coal tires built in nesting time. Lighthouses and electric 

 light towers are the obstacles on which many birds are 

 dashed to death in their nocturnal migrations. Telegraph, 

 electric light, trolley car, and telephone wires are all 

 deadly ; their number is constantly increasing. Thousands 

 of Woodcocks and many other birds are killed by flying 

 against them. Wire fences are nearly as fatal to Grouse 

 and other low-flying birds. 



Last b'ut perhaps not least among the causes which de- 

 crease the number of birds about the centers of population 

 there must be enumerated the clearing up of underbrush, 

 shrubbery, vines, and thickets. Many birds of the tangle 

 are driven out when this cover is destroyed and replaced by 

 well-kept lawns and fields. The work against the gipsy 

 moth and the brown-tail moth, necessary as it is, has reduced 

 the number of birds in many localities because of the clear- 

 ing up and burning of undergrowth and the thinning out of 

 trees, which had to be done. Where the caterpillars of 

 these moths have defoliated large tracts of wooded country 

 this also has decreased the birds, for it has left their nests 

 exposed to the sun and to their enemies. Several corre- 

 spondents have expressed the opinion that birds are killed by 

 the use of arsenical insecticides, such as Paris green and arse- 

 nate of lead, in spraying. Dead birds have been picked up in 

 different localities soon after orchard or shade trees have been 



