Your Bird Friends 



By Edward B. Clark 



If birds are sure of decent companionship and a cup of cold water they 

 never will refuse an invitation to be among those present. Bird thoughts on 

 decent companionship include other birds, men and women who are not dis- 

 turbed by song and who are not overfond of cats and English sparrows. 



A city man with a bit of a garden back of his house can have three or four 

 families of American birds of cheerful habit as his summer neighbors if he 

 cares to pay for good company with a trifle of labor. The suburbanite ought to 

 have six or seven bird families about him, while the man in the country can 

 have as many as he wants and chooses to protect. It is only necessary to do a 

 little fixing up of things round the place and then to whistle a welcome. The 

 birds will come. 



The more bird neighbors, the fewer mosquitos, flies, ants and pestiferous 

 things generally. On the house, in the house, and round the house — and this 

 is literal — the songsters will preempt places to live. It is best to give some of 

 them lodgings, and all of them a bathroom and a drinking place. You may 

 safely leave the rest of the preparations to your guests. 



The first written bit of advice, so far as I know, about how to get bird 

 neighbors, was this: "Kill the cat." In two senses this is capital advice, but if 

 you are fond of your cat and do not care to part with it or to tempt trouble with 

 your neighbor by killing his cat, try the eflfect of a little training on your own 

 pets and suggest the wisdom of a like course to the man next door. Birds hate 

 cats, but cats love birds. Man kills more hundreds of thousands of his feathered 

 friends every year and the cats go man some hundreds of thousands better. So 

 if you like matins and vespers as only birds can sing them, you first must answer 

 this cat question straight. 



The city man can have white-bellied swallows twittering about his roof and 

 snapping up mosquitos and flies outside of his screened windows all summer 

 long if he cares to take the trouble to make a round hole midway of the end of 

 a starch box, and then fasten the box securely to the ridgepole or just under the 

 eaves. He can have bluebirds and .wrens in his yard if he will provide tenements 

 for them, and it may be, if he has a thick bush or two, syringa preferred, a cat- 

 bird will agree to stay and to sing just as well and just as often as he sings in 

 the gardens of the country. 



The man of the suburbs can have with him — and ought to have with him 

 from spring till fall — the white-bellied swallow, the purple martin, the wren, 

 the bluebird, the catbird, the chipping sparrow, the phoebe, and maybe the oriole. 

 The man further afield, the farmer, or any country dweller who has a farmer's 

 garden, ought to entertain all the birds thus far named and, in addition, the yel- 

 low warbler, the warbling vireo, the brown thrasher, the song sparrow, the rose- 

 breasted grosbeak, the flicker, the jay — if he wants him — and the red-headed 

 woodpecker, which is as handsome a creature as Nature ever put feathers on. 



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