Will They Disappear? 



By W. C. Webster. 



unless we, as a people, make efforts to keep 

 them about our homes. 



Our common bird friend, the chimney 

 swift, formerly nested in hollow trees, well 

 within the woods ; but nowadays our chim- 

 neys are overrun with them and, as is al- 

 ways the case when unnatural conditions of 

 any kind exist, they prove so much of a 

 nuisance that the good they do is almost 

 lost sight of. People are placing wire nets 

 on their chimney tops, and now the ques- 

 tion arises : What will the chimney swift 

 do? I quote from an extract from one 

 of Dr. W. L. Ralph's letters : "One of 

 my men brought me the eggs of a chim- 

 ney swift that he said he took from a nest 

 attached to the sides of a well, four feet 

 below the surface of the ground. He says 

 they often nest in such places in this vi- 

 cinity" (San Mateo, Florida). 



Mr. Charles Bendire says of it : 



"Formerly it nested exclusively in hollow 

 tree trunks. Now it generally uses chim- 

 neys for such purposes, and less often the 

 interior of barns. 



"If birds are given their natural sur- 

 roundings and their nesting sites are per- 

 mitted, to a reasonable extent, about our 

 dwellings, there would always be plenty of 

 bird life in the immediate vicinity, and peo- 

 ple would know more about these 'little 

 brothers of the air.' 



"There are several birds which, when 

 deprived of their natural surroundings, 

 cause damage to property and bring down 



upon their heads the unjust wrath of the 

 suffering property-holders, who in reality 

 have none but themselves to thank." 



The beautiful and graceful woodpecker, 

 commonly called the flicker, is an excel- 

 lent illustration of the foregoing facts. The 

 flicker, in selecting a nesting site, generally 

 bores out two or three holes in a tree be- 

 fore it finally makes one large enough to 

 excavate to the desired depth. 



Now, I have in mind a certain farmer 

 who cleared his fields, changed his wood- 

 land into pasture lots and erected, upon the 

 banks of a beautiful little lake, several 

 large ice-houses. The flickers, finding the 

 trees were removed, bored out several neat 

 holes in the farmer's ice-houses and built 

 their nests between the double partitions, 

 which were packed with sawdust and af- 

 forded very comfortable beds for the young 

 birds. Consequently, the farmer waged 

 warfare on the birds and declared them a 

 pest and a nuisance of the same magnitude 

 as the much-abused American crow. 



Thus one can realize how essential it is 

 that sufficient' space be allowed our bird 

 neighbors as our towns take the dimensions 

 of cities and our commercial interests tend 

 to eclipse our better natures. 



An intelligent people as we Americans 

 are, can not fail to be uplifted and 

 bettered mentally and morally by the 

 unconscious effects received from a 

 quiet and restful hour among our feathered 

 songsters. 



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