58 
birds, and, for that matter, to all birds, is the fast-increasing 
horde of foreigners, mainly Italians, who come here from 
their native lands to engage in contract labor. Most of these 
men seem to be sportsmen, hunters or trappers in their way, 
but they regard everything that wears fur or feathers as 
game. These people go out in small parties, most of them 
armed with guns, and, in some cases at least, shoot at nearly 
every living thing within range. I have been told that if so 
much as a song sparrow gets up, the whole party shoots at 
it. Some of these gentry came into my yard in Medford in 
1895, and shot a pair of bluebirds that were nesting there. 
The birds are not shot for profit, for their little bodies will 
not pay for half the ammunition fired at them. They are 
shot for sport, and afterwards eaten. These people also trap 
and net birds. Several of them have been arrested in the 
Middlesex Fells Reservation with live birds in their posses- 
sion, which they had caught by means of twigs covered with 
bird-lime. Bluebirds, orioles, thrushes, purple finches and 
bobolinks are favorites with these trappers, who take them 
for export as cage birds. Most of the birds do not live to 
reach Europe. Three persons speak of a decrease of purple 
finches and one of a decrease of bobolinks from this cause. 
Mr. C. J. Maynard of Newton writes: “ The purple finch is 
fast going. I have not seen over twenty this year. Cause, 
possibly trapping. 7 ’ He speaks of some cases of trapping 
which he knew of. As the purple finch seems to be holding 
its own at a distance from the cities, the inroads made on 
them by trappers near Boston and other cities in eastern 
Massachusetts may account for a local decrease there. A 
good trapper provided with decoy birds will soon have most 
of the male birds in a neighborhood, and some of the females. 
This trapping is not wholly confined to foreigners, but no 
one else seems to use bird nets. 
Mr. Wm. N. Prentiss, a deputy of the Massachusetts 
Fish and Game Commission, writes from Milford, Worces- 
ter County, that one of these people had a net, seventy-five 
feet long by six feet high, stretched where robins and other 
small birds came to drink and feed, which had probably 
“ destroyed hundreds of birds, 77 before he was arrested. 
