before the banging car and spreading town, yet 

 the birds welcome these encroachments and 

 thrive on them. One never gets used to the 

 contrast in the bird life of uninhabited places 

 with that about human dwellings. Thoreau 

 tells his wonder and disappointment at the 

 dearth of birds in the Maine woods ; Burroughs 

 reads about it, and goes off to the mountains, 

 but has himself such an aggravated shock of 

 the same surprise that he also writes about it. 

 The few hawks and rarer wood species found in 

 these wild places are shy and elusive. More 

 and more, in spite of all they know of us, the 

 birds choose our proximity over the wilderness. 

 Indeed, the longer we live together, the less 

 they fear and suspect us. 



II 



USING my home for a center, you may describe 

 a circle of a quarter-mile radius and all the way 

 round find that radius intersecting either a 

 house, a dooryard, or an orchard. Yet within 

 this small and settled area I found one summer 

 thirty-six species of birds nesting. Can any 



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