IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



their nests and rear their families. This will em- 

 ploy all the detective faculties of birdnesting to the 

 full, without imperiling the next generation of birds. 

 Heaven knows, the birds' worst enemy is man! 

 Nor need the fascinating sport of birdnesting, thus 

 practised, cease with boyhood. Indeed, it can 

 never be fully relished until mature years, when the 

 wonders of the paternal and the protective instincts 

 can rightly be felt. To combine with birdnesting 

 a curiosity about bird habits and psychology, and 

 to combine with both a relish for the charms of 

 landscape and field and woodland in which the birds 

 find their natural environment, is one of the pe- 

 culiar and keenest delights of the naturalist the 

 quite amateur naturalist, it may well be, as much 

 as the professional expert. On the purely scientific 

 side, for instance, there is much yet to be learned 

 about the breeding habits of birds, and the data 

 of amateurs, if they are carefully observed, will 

 always be of positive as well as personal value. 



I have no intention here, even had I the ability, 

 of writing a detailed description of the nests and 

 breeding habits of our New England birds. That 

 has been done by the competent ornithologists, 

 with one of whose books the amateur hunter should 

 make himself familiar. But what the ornitholo- 

 gists have not done except, of course, Thoreau, 

 in his voluminous notes is to connect the various 

 birds with the natural environment they choose 

 for a breeding-place, for a home, let us say, so that 

 the marsh or the orchard takes on an added charm 

 from its inhabitants, and they from it. It may not 

 be out of place, then, for even an amateur natural- 



