206 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



were in any danger of starvation, measures might have been 

 taken for their relief. Some grain v>'as distributed for wild 

 fowl by officers of the Massachusetts Commission on Fish- 

 eries and Game. 



Miss M. R. L. Sharpe of Chestnut Hill, Mass., writes: 

 " Birds like nothing better than a cocoanut halved and hung 

 so they can eat it. It contains the fat they seek in suet, and 

 is a much j)leasanter thing to have hanging about than a 

 piece of the carcass of a slaughtered cow. In the blizzard, 

 on Tuesday," she says, " I added to the bread and seeds for 

 my veranda visitors a piece of the clean, pure vegetable 

 cooking fat, made from cocoa and palm oil, and never have 

 I heard such praises twittered except in early spring." 



The Enemies of Birds. 



Much correspondence is received annually in regard to the 

 natural enemies of birds. Those who are interested in this 

 subject are referred to the bulletin on " Decrease of Birds," 

 published in the report of the Massachusetts State Board 

 of Agriculture for 1904. 



Probably not enough attention has been given to field mice, 

 wood mice and shrews as enemies of birds. Mr. M. A. 

 Walton, Gloucester, writes that many times he has caught 

 the white-footed mouse destroying the eggs and young 

 of birds. In the spring of 1899 he watched a white- 

 eyed vireo's nest. When the young birds were two days old 

 he heard the old bird crying just at dusk one night and 

 found two mice trying to get up to the nest. He drove the 

 mice away, but the next morning found one-half the dead 

 bird in a shoe in his cabin where the mice had carried it. 

 Investigation showed that the nest had been robbed. In the 

 winter of 1904-05 he secured a tree sparrow that had been 

 injured by a hawk. He took it to his cabin and the white- 

 footed mice killed it that night and he found parts of the 

 body of the bird in his shoe the next morning and a pile of 

 the feathers and the bones on a shelf near where it had 

 roosted. He found by placing birds' nests with young for 

 safety in the cabin at night that these mice destroyed them 



