CHAPTER V 
MISCELLANEOUS 
Nesting Material, Dust Baths, Gravel, and Lime. —In 
city parks and on city lots it may frequently be 
desirable to provide nesting material besides nesting 
places. While our towns at large are mostly painfully 
dirty, certain streets, parks, and lots are kept clean. 
In such places the birds will readily make use of horse 
hairs from old mattresses, bits of threads, rags, tufts 
of wool, cotton, flax, pieces of hay, straw, and other 
similar material. A Baltimore oriole that-was in need 
of material for nest building tried hard to pull his supply 
of strings out of a minnow net, which lay only a few feet 
from a boat-house. When some strings were placed on 
the ground, he used them at once. The same bird re- 
paired his nest, after a storm had badly damaged it. 
Many birds like to take a dust bath even in winter. 
Common road dust or pulverized garden soil is good 
for such use, and a supply of it should be provided 
before the ground freezes at the beginning of winter. 
Set shallow dust receptacles to their rim into the 
ground in sunny places, protected like drinking foun- 
tains. All gallinaceous birds are fond of dust baths. 
I have also seen the brown thrush enjoy one, and have 
repeatedly observed the house sparrows trying to bathe 
in dust on dry ground that was frozen hard and solid. 
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