they offer to your Society the use of these farms as an addi- 

 tional bird sanctuary. Birds ha\ing been fed and protected 

 here for several years, they are sure to return again next 

 winter. 



"Chipping sparrows have never been more plentiful. 

 Nuthatches, creepers, warblers, woodpeckers (various), flick- 

 ers, bluebirds, American goldfinches, Baltimore orioles, or- 

 chard orioles, scarlet tanagers and wrens were common, while 

 whip-poor-wills and nighthawks have been more in evidence 

 than at any time during ray nine years' stay." 



ALEX. COUSTON. 



"I suppose it is too late to join the ranks of those singing 

 the praises of bird protection, and I have nothing of special 

 value to say. 



"I am glad to feel, however, that no society has had to 

 'rouse my interest' in bird preservation. John Burroughs 

 did that when I was a young girl in Minnesota, though long 

 before that we had built wren houses wherever we made our 

 own homes. My earliest recollection is a sad one — more sig- 

 nificantly sad that I could know, when at the age of six, I 

 mourned over the dead body of a passenger pidgeon, that mj' 

 brother had shot in Indiana. 



"In Greenwich (in 1905, I think), I fed the first starlings 

 that braved the winter, though I had a presentiment of 

 trouble for the native birds, for the starlings ate my suet in 

 such enormous bites that I had to protect the chickadees and 

 woodpeckers by hanging a special suet strip on an upright 

 limb where the starlings could not perch. 



"In Riverside the same family of downey woodpeckers 

 have lived with us, winter and summer, for eight years. 

 Robins nest in both porches, a catbird in a bush honeysuckle, 

 song sparrows in the rose covered terrace, flickers, jays chip- 

 ping sparrows, wrens, everything common and homelike, 

 over all the acre, except the English sparrow. 



"My cat never molests birds, nor allows another cat on 

 the place. All winter there is suet in half a dozen places, and 

 scattered feed under the south windows. Seven seasons of 

 this have not 'pauperized' my bird neighbors, as the eighth 

 winter showed. During the open winter (1914-'15), hardly a 



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