'Pauperizing' the Birds ii 



agreeable diversion and in an emergency may even be a necessity, but it is 

 altogether unlikely that the ancestral method of feeding imposed on the birds 

 by ages of inheritance will lightly disappear, to be replaced by a different form. 

 It should be remembered in this connection that only as the nesting-boxes 

 supplied birds have approximated their natural nesting-places have the birds 

 been induced to accept them freely. Even so small a change as boring a bulg- 

 ing hole in the box, instead of a straight one, and beveling the lower edge of 

 the entrance-hole, increased the occupancy of boxes in the Berlepsch woods 

 from 50 to 90 per cent. If our supposititious Woodpecker, who is here doing duty 

 as representative of his entire class, were to give up his investigations of the 

 tree trunks and abandon himself to the luxury of unlimited suet-pecking, nature 

 would prod him with that sharp stick of instinct which she uses as a stimulant 

 to bird activities in lieu of a conscience, and he would find himself seized with 

 an irresistible desire to fly to some tree and explore its bark for the food hidden 

 beneath. 



In the next place, the enormous number of birds must be considered — some- 

 thing of which few persons have an even approximately adequate conception. 

 The immense concourses of Passenger Pigeons, remembered by many now 

 living and so graphically described by Wilson, Audubon, and other early 

 ornithologists, are common knowledge. But that the Robins of America are 

 today far more numerous than the Passenger Pigeons ever were, and that many 

 other species outnumber them also — perhaps three to one — is not generally 

 appreciated. The gregariousness of the Pigeons, causing them to unite in a 

 few great flocks, made the number much more manifest than do the scattered 

 small bands and individuals of other birds. Yet when we reflect that Robins 

 nest over an area extending at its farthest limits from Mexico to the Arctic 

 Ocean and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and that in much of this vast 

 territory they are fairly crowded, it is easy to conjecture what an immeasurable 

 army they would make if gathered into one flock. How many who read this 

 article have even knowingly seen a Longspur? Yet on the morning after a wet 

 snowstorm that visited Minnesota some years ago, one million Longspurs 

 were found lying dead on the ground, having been brought down by the storm 

 out of a flock that was passing overhead through the night. 



In view of the inconceivably great number of birds that populate the 

 country, then, it should not be difi&cult to comprehend very readily that the 

 few hundred thousands or even millions that receive a varying proportion of 

 their food directly from man constitute an inconsiderable fraction of the 

 whole. If a million Longspurs may be stricken dead in a night without pro- 

 ducing an appreciable increase of insects and weeds, surely we need have no 

 concern over the possible danger that our generosity may work serious injury 

 to agriculture. 



Moreover, consideration must be given to the increase in the bird population 

 wrought by the greater protection resulting from active interest in the birds, 



