CHAPTER XXIX 



Birds in the Garden 



Best Type of Bird Houses — ^Feeding the Birds — Berry-bearing Shrubs 



Mr. Chas. Livingston Bull, than whom no 

 one is better acquainted with the birds and 

 their habits, furnishes us excellent directions 

 'for making them tenantable homes, as follows: 



The bluebird and wren are the easiest to 

 satisfy as to the outward appearance of the • 

 house; probably nine out of ten native birds 

 living in artificial nesting sites are bluebirds. 

 Almost any box, if only it has a space at least 

 four and one-half inches high by the same 

 width, and a length of seven inches or more, 

 with a hole about one and one-half inches in 

 diameter, preferably round, at the end and not 

 too low down in that end, with some sort of perch just bejpw it, will 

 please the bluebird. As to outside finish, the more it looks like some 

 natural object the more sure it will be to attract the little bluecoats. 



The most successful bluebird box of w hich I have knowledge was a 

 section of a hollow limb, in which a woodpecker had cut a little round 

 hole into the cavity. This Kmb, about seven inches in diameter, had 

 been sawed from the tree and a section about two feet long containing 

 the cavity, bad been cut out and wired to the branch of an old Pear 

 tree. This was used every year by a pair of bluebirds, and most years 

 two broods were raised. Think of the thousands of -fruit worms and 

 curcuhos and other insects that went to feed the broods in that nest 

 year after year! 



I have duplicated that nest a number of times simply by cutting a 

 section of a branch or small trunk, seven or eight inches thick and a 

 foot long, boring a hole with an inch and a half bit half way through, 

 near one end, then hollowing out a chamber, either by sawing a slab 

 off one side, which is tacked or wired on again after the chamber 

 (about 5x5x8) is hollowed out, or by sawing a section for a cap two 

 inches thick from the end farthest from the entrance hole and then 

 drilling or turning out, the hollow and closing the end with the cap, 

 carefully tacked on. This house should be hung horizontally. 



If a box is to be used as the foundation of a bluebird house, cover it 

 with bark or make it of slabs with the bark on, or at the very least, 



349 



The Bluebird 



•'Typical of all that is 

 pleasing in bird life gen- 

 erally" 

 Courtesy U. S. Farmers' 

 Bulletin No. 755 



