252 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



others three, in one seven and he counted seventeen in a 

 cellar of a house near the woods. There was a wing of a 

 freshly killed flicker on the floor at the time, — all that was 

 left of the bird. 



Mr. Clayton E. Stone of Lunenburg makes his own nest- 

 ing boxes out of hollow limbs. A few were made from an 

 old wooden pump. He has very few English sparrows, and 

 has been very successful, having had 30 nesting boxes in 

 place on his farm in 1912, more than 20 of which were 

 occupied. The number was not quite so large in 1913. 



Mrs. E. O. Marshall of New Salem has a feeding table 

 for birds. She finds that hemp seeds are very attractive to 

 purple finches and that the chipping sparrows prefer Jap- 

 anese millet seeds. Many birds are fond of cheese curds. 

 Pine grosbeaks like hemp seed and frozen apples or pieces of 

 unfrozen apple. A brush heap near the food table, pur- 

 posely built, gives the birds cover to which to retreat in case 

 of danger, and they go to the food more confidently. They 

 also fly to the brush heap to dry after a bath. In a paper 

 read before the American Ornithologists' LTnion at its last 

 congress in ]^ew York City, Mrs. Marshall gave some inter- 

 esting observations in regard to utilizing birds to protect the 

 nests of other birds. In the early spring of 1910 her cat was 

 confined and other cats driven away, while waste crimibs, 

 suet crumbs, doughnut crumbs, millet and hemp seed were 

 supplied about twice a week on stones, in the pasture, at tbe 

 birds' table near the house and on the window shelf. The 

 robins did not eat suet tied to trees or from the boxes against 

 the trees, but some of them picked np the crumbs of suet 

 from the ground. Some 30 blue jays were fed (with some 

 misgiving) all winter. They came for food even to the 

 windowsills, and the problem then presented was how to pro- 

 tect the nests of the small birds against the jays, which re- 

 mained in the neighborhood during the summer. A large 

 number of robins, finding conditions favorable, nested on the 

 place, while on a neighboring estate, where three dogs and 

 three cats were kept, practically no birds nested. The robins 

 on the Marshall place were so numerous that they were able 

 to protect not only their own nests but those of other small 



