No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE ORNITHOLOGIST. 389 



An Educational Nesting Box Campaign. 



This report has ah-eady referred to the 1,000 nesting boxes 

 which were put up in 191-i by members of the Fish and Game 

 Protective Association, the Commissioners on Fisheries and 

 Game and others, but no mention has been made heretofore of 

 the thousands of bird houses and nesting boxes put up by in- 

 dividuals, — farmers, business men, teachers and pupils in the 

 schools. Many children who have attended my lectures have 

 made and put up nesting boxes. Manual training classes have 

 been making bird houses. The towns of Brookline and Dover, 

 which have bird wardens, have made and put up hundreds. 

 Many of these were furnished by citizens either on their own 

 initiative or under instruction by the bird wardens. Park 

 authorities elsewhere have placed hnndreds. Nesting boxes of 

 the von Berlepsch model, imitating the nests of woodpeckers, 

 have been much used in the hope of attracting woodpeckers to 

 nest in them. These have been used to some extent by flickers, 

 but by no other woodpecker in Massachusetts, so far as the re- 

 turns have come in.^ 



We have found by experience that inexpensive rectangular 

 nesting boxes are more popular with Massachusetts birds. 

 These may be made by any one, or the smaller sizes may be pur- 

 chased at a low price. The year's experience shows that some 

 birds prefer nesting boxes with an inch or two, or even more, of 

 ground cork, or coarse sawdust and dry earth, in the bottom of 

 the box when it is set in place. 



Also, it has been proved that the old idea of erecting a few 

 nesting boxes here and there is not nearly as successful as to 

 set up a large number in a limited space. 



The town of Brookline placed about 100 boxes on trees scat- 

 tered over the town. In one of these a pair of flickers nested. 

 Squirrels and English sparrows occupied nearly all the others, 

 evidently driving out other birds. Blue birds, tree swallows and 

 wrens cannot long defend themselves against these enemies. 

 The flicker, being larger and stronger, may be able to do so oc- 

 casionally. 



1 It is said that Henry Ford of Detroit, and Ernest Harold Baynes of Meriden, New Hamp- 

 ■shire, have succeeded in getting the downy woodpecker to nest in these boxes. 



