70 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Mrs. Henry F. Whitcomb, Amherst: Garden Planting and planting to 

 attract Wild Birds; Birds' Migrations; Economic and Artistic Value 

 of Birds. Illustrated by stuffed birds' skins and many colored plates 

 and maps. 



Rev. Arthur E. Wilson, 85 Newbury Street, Boston: Music of Birds; The 

 Poets' Bird Land; Hiawatha's Chickens. Illustrated by colored 

 lantern slides and whistling imitations of bird song. 



Complaints regarding the Killing of Protectied Non- 

 Game Birds. 



Notwithstanding stringent State and Federal statutes pro- 

 hibiting the killing of non-game insect-eating birds, this wanton 

 slaughter seems to be increasing with the increase of licensed 

 hunters. Never in my official experience have so many com- 

 plaints been received regarding the killing of non-game birds 

 as in the year 1921. Hunting by foreigners is illegal in Massa- 

 chusetts, but complaints indicate that some of them continue 

 to kill small birds. It has been suggested as a possibility that 

 in the cities foreigners secure hunter's licenses illegally, or that 

 they borrow licenses from those who have obtained them 

 legitimately. The list of non-game birds killed by lawbreakers 

 includes herons, gulls, terns, protected owds, nighthawks and 

 nearly all song-birds large enough to make a mouthful for the 

 pot. Some of these birds are shot down for mere sport and 

 thrown away or left where they fall. Most of them, hoAvever, 

 are treated as game and are killed to eat. All sorts of strat- 

 agems are used to deceive the onlooker and to conceal the 

 game. Guns which can be easily concealed, guns almost noise- 

 less, nets which wdien set are almost invisible, horsehair snares, 

 traps, birdlime, — all these things are utilized. It is a common 

 trick for the man with the game to conceal it in a bag of 

 mushrooms and go home on a trolley car, while the man with 

 the gun enters the city in another. This nefarious "sport" is 

 not confined to Massachusetts, but is common all through New 

 England and the Middle States. Many are arrested and fined, 

 but still the destructive work goes on. The frontispiece of 

 this report, from a photograph taken by Mr. Wilbur F. Smith, 

 chief game w^arden of Fairfield County, Connecticut, exhibits 

 the contents of the bag of one man who had shot the birds 

 shown in the illustration. So long as these people come to 



