148 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



the " robin roost" and about the farmyard. They had be- 

 come so tame by this time that they would come to our 

 windows to feed. Many other jays, also, finding here a 

 comparatively safe retreat and some food always at hand, 

 made the place their winter quarters. In the mean time, the 

 crows had also increased largely. They bred mainly in the 

 woods of a neighboring ftirm, but fed much about our place. 

 As time passed and they were not molested, they became 

 more and more bold, taking eggs and chickens from the 

 poultry yards, and cautiously searching among the trees, 

 apparently for eggs and young birds. They did this persist- 

 ently, but kept their movements so well covered that they 

 would hardly have been noticed except for the cries of the 

 parent birds and their habit of pursuing the crows which 

 came near their nests. A few birds beside the robin and 

 the chickadee were able to raise their broods in 1901, but 

 in 1902 the chickadees, pine icarblers and Maryland yellov:- 

 throats icere the only birds smaller than a toichee that ivere 

 Tcnoicn to raise any young. 



Kingbirds, robins, brown thrashers, toAvhees and birds of 

 this size were able, though much persecuted, to raise some 

 young ; but, so far as we could discover, nearly all of the 

 smaller birds, such as warblers, sparrows and vireos, failed 

 to raise any, while several species made no attempt to breed 

 here, but left, presumabh' for safer quarters. The nests of 

 all these small species were persistently robbed. Most of 

 them never hatched an ego-. In some places their egfcrs 

 were stolen before the full complement was laid. The 

 chipping sparrows in a small apple tree by the house, hav- 

 ing lost their first and second set of eggs, built a nest on a 

 branch of a tall pine, only to lose the eggs as before. A 

 pair of vireos changed the location of their nest, with similar 

 results. The ground-breeding birds sufi'ered less. A pair 

 of song sparrows, as before stated, were able to hatch their 

 young. Towhees hatched and reared at least two broods. 

 The nests of the oven birds seemed to escape the marauders, 

 but no young birds were seen later in the woods. Xo doubt 

 the partial immunity of these ground-breeding birds from 

 the attacks of their bird enemies lies in the fact of the care- 



