ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY 



37 



THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 

 SPRING 1917 



Published by the 



ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY 

 For the Conservation of Bird-Life 



COMMITTEE 

 ON PUBLICATION 



JESSE LOWE SMITH. Chairman 

 Highland Park. 



EVERETT L. MILLARD 

 69 W. Washington St., Chicago. 



MRS. C. E. RAYMOND 

 Hinsdale. 



MRS. FREDERIC H. PATTEE 

 Evanston. 



MR. O. M. SCHANTZ 

 10 S. La Salle St., Chicago. 



MR. FREDERIC H. PATTEE. 

 226 W. Madison St.. Chicago. 



A gratifying interest in bird life shown 

 by construction of bird houses, feeding 

 shelters, etc.. has recently manifested itself 

 in various parts of Illinois. Several weekly 

 and monthly publications of national cir- 

 culation such as The Ladies' Home Jour- 

 nal. Country Gentleman, The Farm Jour- 

 nal of Philadelphia, etc., have printed ex- 

 cellent pictures of bird houses and in- 

 formation as to their construction, and 

 these have doubtless helped Audubon So- 

 cieties and bird clubs to awaken public 

 interest. Elsewhere in this bulletin are 

 references to activities of this sort at 

 Edwardsville. Peoria, Hinsdale and other 

 places. It is hoped that the building and 

 placing of bird houses will be followed 

 up by a careful study of what happens. 



this bulletin under the heading of "A 

 Working Library of Bulletins," the story 

 of what happened in the public parks of 

 Hopedale and Brookfield, Mass., is given 

 and this illustrates what may happen else- 

 where. Some years ago the park commis- 

 sioners at Hopedale had put up one hun- 

 dred five bird houses and nesting boxes in 

 their beautiful forest park of several hun- 

 dred acres. In the summer of 1914 ex- 

 amination showed twenty-six empty boxes, 

 sixty-four occupied by squirrels, three by 

 mice, seven by hornets, wasps, etc., three 

 by undesirable birds, and only two by 

 birds for which they were intended. In 

 1915 the town of Brookfield set in place 

 large numbers of nesting boxes of vari- 

 ous patterns. In July a census of some 

 of these showed seventy-six used by Eng- 

 lish Sparrows, nineteen by squirrels, ten 

 by caterpillars of the gypsy moth, one by 

 Bluebirds and one by the blue-crested 

 fly-catcher — only two families of useful 

 nesting birds out of one hundred five 

 nests. 



H* * ♦ 



Mr. Forbush's own experiments were 

 especially concerned with 25 board boxes 

 set up on poles on his estate. By warring 

 on English Sparrows, either by killing 

 them outright or removing their nests 

 when the eggs were laid, he managed to 

 secure peace for the occupants of the 

 nesting boxes and the result was an "out- 

 put" of fourteen Bluebirds, thirteen 

 Chickadees, nine Flickers, and ninety 

 Swallows — these on an area of about eight 

 acres where prior to 1914 not one bird of 

 any of these species was reared. 



It is one thing to get up enthusiasm 

 for building of bird houses, it is quite an- 

 other thing to secure intelligent placing 

 of the houses and the right kind of super- 

 vision to make sure that the houses are 

 not put to uses quite foreign to the intent 

 of the builder. In the Eighth Annual Re- 

 port of State Ornithologist Forbush of 

 Massachusetts which is referred to in 



For further details the reader is referred 

 to the Bulletin previously described and 

 the others in the list given. A study of 

 such bulletins and of the books relating 

 to this same subject referred to in "A 

 Suggestive List of Bird Books" printed 

 elsewhere, may help workers to control 

 nesting conditions in the areas under in- 

 spection. 



