172 REVIEW. 



How to Attract and Protect Wild Birds. By Martin 

 Hiesemann. Translated by Emma S. Buchheim, with an 

 introduction by Her Grace the Duchess of Bedford. 

 (Witherby & Co.) Illustrated. Is. 6d. net. 



The purpose of this little book is to set forth the methods 

 employed by the Baron von Berlepsch to provide suitable 

 nesting-places and food for various birds, and to protect them 

 from their enemies. Wonderful success has attended these 

 methods at Seebach, where exhaustive experiments have been 

 made for many years by Baron von Berlepsch. The 

 statement that "we can only preserve and increase our 



birds by restoring the opportunities for nesting 



of which we have robbed them " is perhaps more applic- 

 able in Germany, where high forestry has robbed many 

 birds of nesting places by the cutting down of decaying 

 trees and undergrowth, than it is in England. At the same 

 time the fact that the number of birds can be actually 

 increased by providing them with suitable nesting- 

 places is a most interesting one, and is sufficiently sub- 

 stantiated by the experiments here described. All our 

 readers are probably well aware of the value of nesting-boxes 

 as means of attracting such birds as Tits, Nuthatches and 

 Wrynecks, but we have never heard of Woodpeckers nesting 

 in boxes in England as they do in Germany. This may be 

 due to the fact that old timber is much more plentiful 

 in this country, but we are inclined to think that if the 

 Berlepsch box were adopted under the conditions so carefully 

 described in this little book, even Woodpeckers would 

 be induced to nest in them. This nesting-box has been 

 designed and is manufactured with elaborate care. After 

 exhaustive experiments, the Baron made the most in- 

 teresting discovery that all the holes made by the various 

 species of Woodpeckers are formed on a uniform plan. 

 Special machines have at length been constructed to produce 

 "boxes" which are faithful imitations of the Woodpecker's 

 nesting hole down to the smallest detail, and the use of these 

 has met with remarkable success. Equally interesting are 

 the methods here described of pruning and growing bushes in 

 various ways to make them attractive to birds for nesting 

 purposes, and also of feeding birds in winter in the most 

 effective w^ay at a minimum of cost. We may hope that the 

 methods here described will be adopted so universally that 

 people will compete as to how many nests they have in their 

 gardens rather than as to how many birds they have caught 

 or killed. 



