13 ) 
FOREWORD 
It is a fact well known to field naturalists that in the heavily 
forested lands of North America comparatively few birds are to 
be seen. The conditions of life are such that ordinarily far more 
are found where a portion of the land is under cultivation. The 
diversified crops, weeds, plants, fruit-bearing shrubs and trees, 
with their attendant hoards of insects found in and about culti- 
vated regions all tend to make more favorable living conditions 
for wild birds. In sections, therefore, where open fields are inter- 
spersed with thickets, grown-up fence rows, orchards and small 
areas of woodlands, and the country traversed with streams, one 
will generally find bird life more abundant. Then, too, in the set- 
tlements men have destroyed many of the smaller animals and 
snakes that prey upon birds. Any species of wild life provided 
with abundant food and insured against an excessive loss from the 
depredations of its enemies will increase in numbers. 
Undoubtedly the farm-land birds of North America have greatly 
increased since the discovery and settlement of the continent. 
Only those that could be, and have been, commercialized have 
suffered particularly from the hands of man. Passenger Pigeons 
are extinct because they were shot, trapped and netted to extermina- 
tion for food and for sport. Many game birds have been threat- 
ened with a like fate. Egrets and some other so-called birds of 
plumage, are rare to-day because of past demands for their feathers 
by the millinery trade. Despite the fact that numerous species 
have largely increased over their former numbers there is yet the 
greatest need for their still further increase. Our rapidly growing 
agricultural interests have resulted in vastly enlarging the varieties 
and numbers of injurious insects that prey upon the growing crop 
and the harvested products. 
The National Association of Audubon Societies is intensely inter- 
ested in this phase of conservation and wishes to use every legitimate 
means of bringing the subject of protecting our economically valu- 
able birds again and again to the attention of the public. This 
book, being Volume II of the series which it is hoped to continue, 
is being brought out and offered at cost in the hope that it will 
further stimulate interest in American bird protection. 
In this Volume there may be found discussions of the lives and 
habits of birds representing eleven of the seventeen Orders inhabit- 
ing North America. 
T. Gilbert Pearson. 
