BIRD HOMES 
PART | 
Chapter I 
INTRODUCTORY 
IT has been suggested that a work on Bird Homes might do 
more harm than good, since it would add to the knowledge 
already possessed by the birds’ human enemies. I think this 
surely a mistake ; a near acquaintance with our feathered friends 
in their homes will surely give to the most careless such an in- 
terest in the birds and their daily lives, such a new sense of com- 
panionship with them and affection for them, that it can but work 
for their good. Yet it may be as well to say emphatically at the 
outset : Make your object the study of birds through their nests 
and eggs. Don’t add a new terror to the many that already beset 
anxious little bird-mothers by disturbing them during the breed- 
ing season or taking their eggs for a so-called ‘‘collection.” If 
you stop at this you will lose some of the choicest pleasures that 
fall to the lot of the nature lover. 
So far as I know, this side of the birds’ life has been com- 
paratively neglected. There are plenty of scientific works on 
odlogy and nidification, and so on, but hardly anything that 
deals with the subject from what might be called the ‘‘ human” 
side. If this book helps the ordinary unscientific person to get 
some closer glimpse of the birds in their réles as heads ofa family ; 
to study their wonderfully adapted nests and beautiful eggs as 
manifestations of that bird nature which is so charmingly varied 
and so endlessly interesting—if it does this in any measure at all 
I shall be more than satisfied. 
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