NOTES BY THE WAY 



tional heat and dryness of these months, and the 

 freedom from violent storms and tempests through- 

 out the summer, all worked together for the 

 good of the birds. Their nests were not broken up 

 or torn from the trees, nor their young chilled and 

 destroyed by the wet and the cold. The drenching, 

 protracted rains that make the farmer's seed rot or 

 He dormant in the ground in May or June, and the 

 summer tempests that uproot the trees or cause 

 them to lash and bruise their foliage, always bring 

 disaster to the birds. As a result of our immunity 

 from these things the past season, the small birds in 

 the fall were perhaps never more abundant. In- 

 deed, I never remember to have seen so many of 

 certain kinds, notably the social and the bush spar- 

 rows. The latter literally swarmed in the fields 

 and vineyards ; and as it happened that for the first 

 time a large number of grapes were destroyed by 

 birds, the little sparrow, in some localities, was 

 accused of being the depredator. But he is inno- 

 cent. He never touches fruit of any kind, but 

 lives upon seeds and insects. What attracted this 

 sparrow to the vineyards in such numbers was 

 mainly the covert they afforded from small hawks, 

 and probably also the seeds of various weeds that 

 had been allowed to ripen there. The grape-de- 

 stroyer was a bird of another color, namely, the 

 Baltimore oriole. One fruit-grower on the Hudson 

 told me he lost at least a ton of grapes by the birds, 

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