Bird-Life in My Florida Garden During the Months of September 



and October 



By H. Nehrling 



IRDS are the poets of the landscape. Without them the world 

 would be a dreary, cheerless place. Life lacking poetry, enthu- 

 siasm and ideals is not worth living. Fortunately, however, we 

 find all this in the beauties of nature and particularly in bird 

 and plant-life. In the backwoods of the North the dainty Bluebird, the 

 Robin and the Phoebe are the first to welcome the lonely settler when build- 

 ing his simple log cabin, and in this Southland the ever cheerful Mocking- 

 bird and the beautiful Cardinal Redbird are his companions from the begin- 

 ning, singing their sweetest notes and teaching him continually that man 

 shall never despair. 



When I made the first attempt to plant a garden in this Southern 

 " dreamland " in the autumn of 1891 I was quite surprised about the scarci- 

 ty of birds as compared with similar localities in Texas. This peculiarity I 

 found even more forcibly placed before me in the nesting season — such fa- 

 miliar birds as the Orchard Oriole, Bewick's Wren, the Blue Grosbeak, the 

 Painted Bunting, the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, the Red-eyed Vireo and its 

 congeners, the White-eyed and Bell's Vireos, the Lark Bunting, the Wood 

 Pewee, the Yellow Warbler and other birds so common in the gardens oi 

 Texas have never been observed in my garden or its vicinity. Even the 

 birds usualh breeding here in abundance shunned the place during a num- 

 ber of years. This was undoubtedly due to the presence of a large number 

 of tree-climbing snakes, raccoons and opossums, southern gray squirrels and 

 particularly the flying squirrel. 



When planting my garden I did it with a view of attracting the birds, 

 of creating homes for many of them. Magnolias (the large-leaved evergieen 

 Southern [Magnolia grandijlora,) American olives, hollies, dense cedars, 

 loblolly and sweet bays, laurel cherries and wax myrtles were massed to- 

 gether. Of exotic sub-tropical trees I added many species of palms, 

 the camphor tree, the Australian silk oak {Grevillea robtista), bottle brush 

 shrubs (Metros ideros and Calitstemon), banana shrubs (Magnolia fuscata), star 



