The Seamy Side of Bird-Life 



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even the mice destroy many small ones, while 

 the wildcat, weasel, raccoon and red squirrel, 

 climb trees in a systematic search for eggs and 

 squabs, subsisting largely at this season (when, 

 indeed, other food for them is scarce) upon 

 these delicacies. The chipmunk does some simi- 

 lar damage, but the gray and fox squirrels are 

 innocent of it, else it would prove most mis- 

 chievous to cultivate them in city parks and 

 village streets. 



Yet none of these animals, nor in thickly 

 settled districts all of them together, equal do- 

 mestic cats in this rapine. Night and day, in 

 the neighborhood of towns not only, but upon 

 farms, they range the woods and fields search- 

 ing high and low for birds' nests. No single 

 agency with the possible exception of the 

 English sparrow has done so much to drive 

 away and diminish our village birds as these 

 useless and dreadful " pets." 



I was told by an intelligent man, who took 

 pains to " keep tabs " on Tabby, that one single 

 house-cat in western New York last summer 

 destroyed sixty-eight nests within a radius of 



<$ 55 



