12 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



dish on the table. But neither chickadees, nut- 

 hatches, nor woodpeckers were made lazy by this 

 feeding. They continued, even after a square meal, 

 to hop up and down and round about every limb 

 and twig of the apple-tree, exploring every crevice 

 of the bark. And that tree in three years never 

 had a caterpillar's nest on it, nor showed any sign 

 of injury by insect pests or scale. I do not need the 

 evidence which comes from Germany (where much 

 more extensive efforts have been made to attract 

 the birds) that birds are beneficent in our trees. In 

 the spring of 1905, in Eisenach, the larvae of a moth 

 attacked and nearly stripped a large wood, while in 

 a neighboring wood in Seebach, in which nesting- 

 houses had been systematically placed, the trees 

 were uninjured. A similar effect was noticed in 

 the orchards. Whereupon, according to Gilbert H. 

 Trafton, in his excellent book, Methods of Attracting 

 Birds, the inhabitants of the villages around See- 

 bach began to put out bird-boxes also, and the pest 

 visibly .decreased. 



The steady feeding of the birds during the winter 

 frequently induces them to remain and nest near the 

 dwelling, especially if food is kept out through the 

 spring. Nearly every year a pair of chickadees 

 nested in a wren-box on my summer-house, the box 

 being immediately reoccupied, after their departure, 

 by the wrens. One pair of woodpeckers, too, re- 

 mained all the year, and though they were much 

 less conspicuous during the summer, I often heard 

 their hammering on the apple-trees and saw them 

 hard at work destroying insects under the bark. 

 Our yard, indeed, was full of birds' nests, and we had 



