September, 1911 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
345 
An Experiment Station for Bird Culture 
By Omar H. Sample 
ios UR first census of birds, taken a few years 
= ago by the Director of the New York 
Botanical Garden, showed an average de- 
crease in the number of birds of forty-six 
per cent. in fifteen years. And the per- 
centage loss will naturally grow as our 
forests decrease. Our ordinary operations 
of forestry and agriculture 
are bringing with them a 
steady decrease in the num- 
ber of permanent, non- 
migrating birds. Our no- 
blest song-birds, the major- 
ity of them insect-eaters, 
are rendered homeless on 
the farm because they make 
their nests in shrubs, bushes 
and hedges, and the mod. 
ern farmer must clear 
away the undergrowth. 
Even the titmouse is on the 
decrease, for he houses in 
the trunks of hollow trees, 
and modern forestry and 
gardening cannot tolerate 
hollow or dying tree-trunks. 
The unpaid and faithful 
guardians of the crops are thus ostracized from their nat- 
ural occupations. 
The wanton slaughter of certain of our birds for profit 
or alleged “‘sport”’ is gradually being checked by a strong 
public sentiment and some legislation. The League of 
American Sportsmen and the Audubon societies are slowly 
“The Hessian Food House’’—the standard outdoor dining-room for 
birds used at Seebach 
Display-room of nesting-box factory 
enlisting the aid of all. good citizens in putting legal bar- 
riers against such useless destruction of bird life as the 
killing of song-birds for food, or the slaughtering of the 
egret to plume milady’s hat, but we have yet to learn that 
we must restore to the birds by artificial means what our 
modern systems of cultivation are taking away. 
In Germany a five-hundred-acre experiment station for 
the study and preservation 
of bird life has been estab- 
lished to show the people 
how to restore to the feath- 
ered citizens of the forests 
the comforts and conve- 
niences of which modern 
civilization is gradually 
robbing them. The federal 
states of Germany are not 
only protecting 152 species 
of birds by law, but are 
growing nesting-hedges for 
them; cultivating, pruning, 
and grafting nesting- 
bushes; hollowing out 
natural nesting - holes; 
building nesting - boxes in 
the trees; fashioning 
natural and convenient 
winter feeding-houses; and protecting the birds from their 
carnivorous enemies. Baron von Berlepsch, who has turned 
his great ancestral estate at Seebach into an experiment 
station for bird culture, is the father of the modern science 
of bird protection, and we may learn much from a study of 
the methods employed for encouraging bird life at Seebach. 
Se a ajay ~ 
WeLate ee PR Ee ee 
The Old Castle of the Seebach Estate, now used by the Experiment 
Station for Bird Protection 
