3o8 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



EDITED BY THE DIRECTOR 

 Elwin R. Sanborn, Asst. Editor 



Published Quarterly at the Office of the Society, ll Wall St., 



New York City. 



Copyright, igob, by the New York Zoological Society. 



No. 23. OCTOBER, 1906 



Subscription price, 50 cents for four numbers. 



Single numbers, 15 cents. 



MAILED FREE TO MEMBERS. 



(Officers of tlje ^ocictp. 



^rceiDcnt : 



Cxecutibe Committee : 



Charles T. Barney, Cha 

 John S. Barnes, Madisc 



Philip Schuyler, Willi. 



Samuel Thorne, 



Levi P. Morto 



General ®Hittx6 



White Nil 

 ry Fairfield Osi 

 '/Sri'o. 



Secretary, Madison 

 Treasurer, Percy R, 

 Director, William 

 Director of thc.-iquai 



Grant, ii Wall Street. 

 . Pyne, 52 Wall Street. 

 T. Hornadav, Zoological Park. 



i»»i Charles H. Townsend, Battery P.' 



JSoarti of iHanasers : 



EX-OFFICIO, 

 of the City of New Yorl;^ Hon. George B. McClella 

 ■ " . Moses Herrm 



The President of the Dep't of Park 



Class of ld07. Class of 1908. 



F. Augustus Schermerhorn, Henry F. Osborn, 



A. Newbold Morris, Charles T. Barney. 



Percy R. Pyne, William C. Church. 



George B, Grinnell, Lispenard Stewart, 



Jacob H. Schiff. II i immit I^ r I, i 



Edward J. Berwind, '. 



George C. Clark, lin, ■ ;' \ , ■■ 



Cleveland H. Dodge, ("1^,, ,. , i ; >., i, ,i, i 



C. Ledyard Blair, }^ni--. }. H.;!, 



Cornelius V'anderbilt, George F. Baker, 



Nelson Robinson, Grant B. Schley, 



Frederick G. Bourne, Payne Whitney, 



Cla0£f of 1909. 



John S. Bai 

 Madison Grant. 

 William White Nile 

 Samuel Thorne. 

 Henry A. C. Tavloi 

 Hugh y. Chishoim. 

 Wm. D. Sloane. 



THE SUCCESS OF THE NEW BIRD 

 HOUSE 



One hundred and fifty thousand dollars is 

 a good deal to risk in an experiment and yet 

 that was what was done in building the new 

 Bird House — an experiment, however, backed 

 up by so much experience and judgment and 

 careful planning on the part of the Director 

 that every favorable prophecy has come true.'*' 



As is ever the case with innovations, there 

 were people both here and abroad who pre- 

 dicted doleful failure. One Englishman 

 called the house a "grotesque New York ex- 

 periment." After a year of occupancy, when 

 every novel detail had been tried out and none 

 found wanting, the writer made answer to 

 these doubts and vague prophecies of evil in 

 the "Avicultural Magazine," of England. So 

 many of the questions are of interest to the 

 members of the Zoological Society that a 

 brief outline of some of them is well worthy 

 of record. 



*See Z. S. Bulletin No. i8, July. 1905. 



Uur English critic spoke truer than he 

 knew when he abused the New York climate. 

 The fluctuations are beyond all belief, and, 

 theoretically, all alien birds should promptly 

 succumb to its severity. At present there are 

 not far from one thousand healthy, happy 

 birds sheltered by the "grotesque experi- 

 ment" — from a flock of tiny grassquits to 

 great concave-casqued hornbills, and all 

 have positively refused to be influenced by 

 the critic's logic. The storms of winter have 

 howled outside and found the building in- 

 vincible, guarded night and day by the auto- 

 matic thermostats, regulating the temperature 

 to a degree ; the heat of summer has beat 

 down and only encouraged the birds to 

 greater activity and song. This latter objec- 

 tion was considered long before the building 

 was completed, and it was never the expecta- 

 tion that the roof should remain as it was 

 throughout the summer. When the direction 

 and force of the rays of the summer sun was 

 gauged, a thin skim of white was laid on 

 over certain panes of glass roof, thus allow- 

 ing the tenants of each cage to enjoy .sunshine 

 or subdued shadow as they preferreil. Even 

 this painting of the roof will not bi> neces- 

 sary when the plants have had sever; 1 years 

 to grow : for, the critic notwithstandii^^, the 

 flora of the Bird House is a decided su<^cess. 



The mice wrought havoc at first, bu{\we 

 pitted brains of the genus Homo against th5)se 

 of the genus Mns, and Homo has woi\! 

 The mice gnawed the roots of the palms;\ 

 so we protected them with wire ; they made\ 

 nests in the heart of the frond stems, so we \ 

 bound a mouse's-reach of the trunk with im- \ 

 passable smooth metal. The vermin destroyed 

 the vines until the boxes were isolated on 

 brackets and the bricks were varnished 

 smooth. Defeated here, they held on for a 

 time in the cages themselves, unt'l now a sys- 

 tematic relay of traps, terrier dogs and spar- 

 row hawks have reduced their number to a 

 mere remnant of what they once were. The 

 fox terriers were long since introduced to all 

 the birds, and create hardly a ripple of ex- 

 citement when lifted into a cage and told to 

 "dig 'em out." The tropical sparrow hawks 

 learned at once that there was good hunting 

 by moonlight, and when moved to a vacant 

 cage next to a flock of weavers, thev feasted 

 high on the mice running thrnu8:h the cage. 

 Of late their supply has dwindled almost to 

 nothing. All holes leading to the cellar were 

 stopped up and — thus ended the mouse war ! 



Among the plants now flourishing in the 

 building are sago palms, illawarra and areca 



