72 



Bird - Lore 



out the varieties of trees that attracted them 

 and the causes that have driven them away. 

 The winter-killing of hemlock hedge, thick 

 as a wall, the replacing of a tangle of old 

 spireas and weigelias by trim individual 

 shrubs, the death, from the approach of til- 

 lage, of a crown of cedars that made a blue- 

 green spot above the snow in a waste pas- 

 ture, the formalizing of a cat-tail and bush 

 fringed spring to be a cement-edged duck- 

 pond — all have their tale to tell. The 

 former of the slothfulness of man, who does 

 not replace, as nature, inexorable, does, the 

 latter the taint of commercialism where it is 

 so often unnecessary, the trade spirit that 

 insists upon a material yield instead of the 

 richer one of beauty. 



Any one can buy good fat ducks at so 

 much per pound in the market, but money 

 alone cannot create the pool that sends out 

 the hylas' greeting in March and from its 

 sheltering trees and bushes the music of 

 Red-wing, Marsh Wren, Water Thrush, 

 and Veery echoes through the spring dawns 

 and twilights. I am very glad that I shall 

 not be alive when the world's water is all 

 utilized, the marshes drained, the weeds sub- 

 dued, a universal insecticide invented, all 

 waste-land reclaimed. What a horrible, 

 lonely, selfish world it will be. 



If you replant from the bird standpoint, 

 beside trees you must have bushes and vines 

 in a four to one proportion. 



The bird may sing in a lofty tree top and 

 a few species nest there, but it is either close 

 to the ground in the small tree, or impene- 

 trable bush or hedge that is the nesting 

 place, the waiting room where it rests be- 

 tween excursions for food and during rainy 

 weather. 



As a part of our families are winter resi- 

 dents there should be evergreens with the 

 lower branches left to trail on the ground, as 

 well as other thick underbrush for shelter. 



Neatness, cutting up, and relentless prun- 

 ing and shaping of shrubs and trees are 

 doubtless very moral processes in their way 

 and may be sometimes necessary when insects 

 and blight gain mastery in a garden, just as 

 disinfecting fluids are in an epidemic, but 

 they are quite as offensive to birds as pop- 

 guns. 



The taller deciduous trees, elms, maples, 

 birches, etc., offer in summer the shelter of 

 shade and the food always to be found in 

 the greenery and bark covering of branches, 

 but during family life it is in the lower fruit 

 trees full of convenient nesting places of 

 knot-hole and crotch where the majority of 

 birds congregate. And after a storm the 

 birds may always be seen flying from the low 

 evergreens and wild hedges. 



"But," you say, "we cannot plant old 

 orchards." No, but every village should 

 cherish the few that remain as public avi- 

 aries. For nowhere else can those familiar 

 birds, so dear to us all, be sheltered, and if 

 the orchard is inclosed by a stone wall or 

 snake fence in whose protection a hedge 

 of aspens, sumachs, red cedar, hackberry, 

 elder and wild roses, barberries and tall 

 blackberries has sprung up, with all the 

 branches trimmed and draped by clinging 

 vines, fox, and frost grapes, waxwork, 

 Virginia creeper, clematis. 



Such a place is a birds' paradise, and in 

 planting to please the birds keep it in mind. 

 Small places can easily be fenced by either 

 arborvitae, hemlock, or privet hedges; stone 

 walls concealed and beautified by berry- 

 bearing bushes, and by vines that not only 

 offer shelter but food as well. Lacking wild 

 vines, plant nursery stock; half a hundred 

 plants of Concord grapes may be cheaply 

 had and scattered liberally about the fences 

 and outbuildings of every modest home. 



Then there is the cheerful Chinese honey- 

 suckle that is sturdy and stout of limb. I 

 would have you plant it everywhere as I 

 have, until it riots and flourishes over porch, 

 trellis, walls, bushes and in masses on the 

 ground, like the veriest weed. 



A clean vine is this honeysuckle, and one 

 that never injures the painted house wall 

 against which it may be trained ; its flowers, 

 beginning in June, give a tropic quality to 

 the night air, offer a feast alike to the Hum- 

 ming-birds by day and the night-flying 

 hawk moths. The leaves of dark rich 

 green give shelter from heat and cold and 

 cling on bravely until past midwinter, 

 March even finding some still clinging to 

 the south porch. As for the glistening 

 blackberries, many a breakfast do they give 



