No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE ORNITHOLOGIST. 249 



Gardner, and its committee for the protection of birds, which, 

 through its zealous secretary, Mrs. E. O. Marshall, exerted 

 gri-at influence not only in Massachusetts but in other States. 



Pkogeess in attracting and protecting Birds. 



The interest in birds continues to grow and spread. In 

 most Massachusetts towns there are people now who take 

 pains to attract and protect them. Many people during the 

 past year have put up nesting boxes made on the von 

 Berlepsch plan in imitation of woodpecker homes. These 

 have not been so uniformly successful as was expected, pos- 

 sibly because those who placed them did not always choose 

 the right situations; because the size of the entrance holes 

 was not always right for the birds that came to occupy them ; 

 or because our American birds do not take so kindly to this 

 pattern of nesting box as European birds do. As far as can 

 be learned no one in Massachusetts has had so much success 

 as attended the experiments of Mr. William H. Browning on 

 Long Island, where, as noted in a former report, about 200 

 boxes were put up and most of them occupied. Undoubtedly, 

 however, a large proportion of the birds which nested in his 

 boxes were starlings, with some sparrows, both European 

 birds. ISTo box with an entrance hole smaller than II4 

 inches in diameter is very likely to be used by any American 

 bird except the wren. Chickadees have been known to enter 

 a box with an entrance l^/s inches in diameter, but they seem 

 to prefer the larger opening. 



Woodpeckers are said to use these nesting boxes in Ger- 

 many. The only woodpeckers that I have known to take 

 them in this country are the flicker and the red-headed wood- 

 pecker ; but these have nested also in rectangular boxes when 

 ground cork or sawdust has been supplied to keep the eggs 

 from rolling about. The forestry department of Brookline, 

 Mass., learning that the woodpeckers were destroying the 

 imported leopard moth, purchased and placed in the trees 

 a number of nesting boxes in the hope of attracting these 

 birds. The " Boston Globe " of April 19, 1913, says that 

 two boxes have been occupied by them but no details can be 

 learned. 



