Editorial 



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2^irtr=lLore 



A Bi-Monthly Magazine 

 Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Contributing Editor. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Published by D. APPLETON & CO. 



Vol. XXIII Published April 1. 1921 No. 2 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 



Price in the United States, one dollar and fifty cents a year; 

 outside the United States, one dollar and seventy -five cents, 

 postage paid. 



COPYRIGHTED, 192I, BY FRANK M, CHAPMAN 



Bird-Lore's Motto: 

 A Bird in the Busb Is Worth Two in tbe Hand 



The nature lover who would live in 

 complete harmony with his environment 

 must find no small difficulty in explaining 

 satisfactorily the warfare which exists 

 between man and his fellow-creatures. 

 So far as birds are concerned, wholly aside 

 from direct destruction for sport, food, or 

 feathers, the advance of what we call 

 civilization is inevitably marked by the 

 gradual retreat or entire disappearance 

 of those species which for one reason or 

 another cannot endure contact with man. 



The mere presence of man is often 

 sufficient to drive away the wilder birds 

 and the motor car, motor boat and air- 

 plane have so increased man's ubiquity 

 that one must now travel far to get beyond 

 the sound of exploding gasoline. Marshes 

 are drained, forests are felled and even 

 the trees that remain have their nesting- 

 cavities filled with cement and their 

 foliage sprayed with poison. 



Returning to an oft-frequented winter 

 resort in Florida we went to call on a 

 Screech Owl and Flicker which, the year 

 before, we had left peacefully occupying 

 homes in opposite sides of a cabbage palm 

 stub, only to find that the Village 'Im- 

 provement' Society had replaced the dead 

 tree with a living one. The general effect 

 for the casual observer was no doubt 

 'improved,' but heedless improvements of 

 this kind only sacrifice superficial appear- 

 ances to the things that are really worth 

 while. The little Owl sitting in grim 

 quaintness at his door had made a host of 



friends during the preceding winter and 

 his place could not be taken by another 

 palm tree exactly like a hundred others in 

 its row. Fortunately, in this instance, 

 those responsible for the birds' eviction 

 were more than ready to repair an un- 

 witting error and homes hollowed from 

 palm logs were placed near the site of the 

 stub. Within a week one was occupied by 

 a Screech Owl and the other by a Flicker; 

 possibly the Owl and the Flicker that had 

 been dispossessed. Incidentally there is a 

 lesson here, for the case admirably illus- 

 trates how improvements and regard for 

 the rights of other creatures may go hand 

 in hand. 



From the Owl's home one may look 

 out over the waters of the Atlantic where 

 daily are being enacted countless tragedies 

 in bird-life which are perhaps the saddest 

 of any for which man is unintentionally 

 responsible. 



We have all heard of the gradual 

 substitution of oil for coal as fuel on 

 steamers and have learned with satis- 

 faction that this step in human progress 

 would make unnecessary the killing work 

 of stokers at flaring furnace doors in the 

 bowels of a ship. But we did not realize 

 that oil-burning or oil-bearing vessels in 

 cleaning their tanks at sea spread a death- 

 trap over the waters in which thousands 

 of birds meet their fate. 



Today (February 25) the east coast of 

 Florida is strewn with dead or dying 

 Loons, Horned Grebes, Brown Pelicans, 

 Gannets, Gulls and Terns whose plumage 

 has become so clogged with crude oil as to 

 be functionless. A Brown Pelican, that 

 looked as though it had been dipped in a 

 tar-barrel, was a subject for the kodaks of 

 thoughtless tourists at Daytona Beach 

 who seemed not to realize the bird's hope- 

 less plight, for birds thus affected must die 

 by starvation. 



We understand that an appeal has been 

 made to the Department of Commerce to 

 instruct the captains of steamers not to 

 clean their oil-tanks within twenty miles 

 of land, but even should they comply, the 

 birds of the high seas will still fall vic- 

 tims to the onward march of civilization. 



