LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 9 



destroying the cover for the birds, taking away their 

 nesting-places, driving them, his best friends, un- 

 consciously from his door. I never see the modern 

 slaughter with a brush scythe along a country road, 

 for instance, without thinking not only how much 

 beauty of wild landscape gardening has been laid 

 low, but how many nesting-places have been laid 

 low, also — nesting-places for birds that are the 

 farmers' assistants. The vireos and chipping-spar- 

 rows love to nest in friendly proximity to a road or 

 lane, in shrubs or low trees, and both varieties of 

 birds are great insect-destroyers. The sparrow also 

 eats weed seeds. A nest of four young sparrows 

 was watched by a government observer at different 

 hours on four different days, and it was found that 

 a day's average rations for the brood was 238 insects 

 and caterpillars. Watching a similar nest in my 

 grapevine, I saw the parents bring seven cutworms 

 (each worm capable of destroying a cauliflower 

 plant worth fifteen or twenty cents) to the young in 

 less than half an hour. How can any one doubt 

 that it pays to have as many chipping-sparrows as 

 possible nesting near one's farm and orchard? 



The problem of attracting the birds back to our 

 dwellings and farms, of assisting them to breed in 

 safety, of providing them with proper shelter, and, 

 in seasons when their natural food-supply is difficult 

 to get, of furnishing them the food their active little 

 bodies demand, is not one that can be solved by 

 law. All laws which protect the beneficent birds 

 from destruction by pot and feather hunters, by 

 cats and game-hogs, are of course necessary, and 

 will have to be ever more strictly enforced. But it 



