The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
985 
Nature Notes 
Skunk Protection 
The mail has brought to our door this 
week a card from our County Agricul¬ 
tural Agent naming a week for a wood¬ 
chuck clean-up, and requesting all farm¬ 
ers to gas all on their farm, suggesting 
the use of carbon bisulphide. All farmers 
know that the skunk lives and rears its 
young in woodchuck holes, and that the 
skunk stays in during the day, while the 
woodchuck is apt to be out feeding. The 
skunk is a great benefit to all agriculture, 
because it subsists mainly on grubs and 
farm pests. Cannot there be some other 
way suggested, such as trapping or shoot¬ 
ing the woodchuck, in this way protecting 
the beneficial skunk? mrs. b. e. b. 
R. N.-Y.—A good suggestion. As we 
have stated, the surest way to kill off the 
woodchucks is to shoot them, and surely 
the skunk is a useful animal, to say noth¬ 
ing of the value of his hide. As we see 
on page 955, there is a demand for wood¬ 
chuck meat. 
Birds on a Wisconsin Farm 
I have always been a great lover of 
birds, and have ever tried to get acquaint¬ 
ed with all my bird neighbors. On the 
outer edge of the front porch now we 
have hanging a birdhouse with two com¬ 
partments ; one was intended for wrens 
to build in, and the hole into it is so 
small that other birds would not be able 
to enter there. The hole to the other 
compartment is larger, and I had hoped 
to have the bluebirds nest there. We 
have another birdhouse with but one 
room, but is supposed to be for bluebirds, 
and we hung it in the early Spring in a 
small basswood tree on the lawn, hoping 
the b-uebirds would come and nest in it. 
In a few days the bluebirds came and be¬ 
gan building, but they scarce had time 
to make a start when several pairs of 
English sparrows came, and as the blue¬ 
birds are not quarrelsome they went away 
and the sparrows continued to build. But 
only a few days passed by and one morn¬ 
ing a pair of flickers were there, hammer¬ 
ing away on the house to try to make an 
opening large enough for them to pass in 
and out. They came day after day and 
hammered away as hard as they could 
until more than a week had passed by, 
and they had only succeeded in making a 
hole an inch long and one-fourth of an 
inch deep; the little birdhouse was made 
of hardwood and did not hammer to 
pieces as easily as the old rotten apple 
tree in the orchard where the flicker 
peeks out the hole for a nest there. My 
husband decided to take pity on the flick¬ 
ers and help them to material for a nest, 
so from a basswood log a foot through he 
sawed a piece l 1 /^ ft. long, with a slight 
slant on what was to be the top. On one 
side he bored a hole with a 2-in. auger, 
and nailed a small piece of board on both 
top and bottom for roof and floor, lie 
then elevated this piece of log on a 6-ft. 
post beside a hickory tree in the dooryard 
and wired it to the tree so the wind could 
not blow it over. His work was finished 
at dusk, and in the morning with the day¬ 
light the flickers came and found their in¬ 
tended home ; they were evidently pleased 
with their find, for they took immediate 
possession. How long before the eggs 
were laid and incubation began we do not 
know ; none of the family ever ventured 
near the nest for fear of frightening the 
birds, but in just six weeks from the time 
my husband elevated the log for the nest 
the full-grown, full-feathered young flick¬ 
ers came out of that nest on the tree. 
After the bluebirds were driven from 
the birdhouse on the tree, they came to 
the birdhouse on the porch, and again 
they carried in sticks and grass in the 
box for a nest; but, as before, they had 
scarce worked a day before again the 
sparrows came and routed them. They 
left again, and we trust that out in the 
orchard in some old apple tree they may 
have found a place suited to their needs, 
and perhaps at last escaped the English 
sparrows. How are we to rid ourselves 
of this pest, which drives away the birds 
from our homes? 
But I will here record that the little 
house wren is enough every time for the 
English sparrow. He darts after him 
whenever he finds him near his little 
house, and chases them entirely away 
from that immediate neighborhood. The 
feathers the sparrow has carried in the 
box he carries out and throws to the 
wind, for although sparrows may use 
feathers in making nests, no wren has use 
for feathers, and Mrs. Wren is never sat¬ 
isfied till the box is cleaned of what the 
sparrow has worked so hard carrying in. 
All this time the wren mixes music with 
his work, and there is no bird quite 
equals the wren as he warbles all day on 
the branch near his nest. 
Beside the house, under the bedroom 
window, is a flowering currant, and near 
the center of the bush, scarce two feet 
from the ground, two chipping sparrows 
have built a nest; four little blue eggs 
spotted with brown are in the nest, and 
the female bird is sitting; sometimes as 
she returns to the nest after being off in 
search of food, she alights for a few 
minutes on the window sill to rest. A 
week or 10 days have passed, and one 
morning two chipping sparrows mourn an 
empty nest; not even an eggshell is left 
to give a clew to the thief who has broken 
up this little home. 
The little ruby-throated humming-bird 
comes to the flowering currant to gather 
honey, and sometimes alights on a branch 
for a moment, which gives us a much bet¬ 
ter chance to admire his plumage than 
when he is on the wing. 
This Summer we first learned that the 
Baltimore oriole, like the humming-bird, 
gathers honey ; day after day they gath¬ 
ered honey together on the flowering cur¬ 
rant ; every few minutes the oriole would 
throw back his head, giving his clear war¬ 
ble, and then again flit from branch to 
branch for honey. Across the road in the 
meadow we have the meadow larks and 
bobolinks; the catbird nests in the lilacs 
on the edge of the lawn; the robin builds 
each year in the apple tree by the poultry- 
house. We have, too, the little warbler; 
it flits about like a butterfly from tulip 
bed to peonies, from flowering currant to 
any other blooms, showing no partiality 
in its visits, but c.alling on all the same. 
We have the scarlet tanager in the or¬ 
chard, and sometimes you hear his cheer¬ 
ful “chip-ehurr, chip-churr” in the shrub¬ 
bery nearer the house. The mourning 
dove and the cuckoo are also visitors of 
our orchard through the Summer. The 
barn swallow always returns each Spring 
to nest in some of the outbuildings ; it is 
always a pleasure to watch him as he sails 
back and to, gathering insects on the 
wing for his breakfast. 
When twilight comes, from the nearby 
woodlot you can hear the whip-poor-will’s 
call, and as dusk deepens he comes to the 
garden fence, and even on the doorstep 
sings his “Whip-poor-will, whip-poor- 
will,” which recalls our childhood and the 
days of long ago. We have the quail, 
phoebe and bluejay, besides many birds 
whose quiet-colored plumage does not as 
readily identify them as the brighter col¬ 
ored plumage does their gayer mates of 
woodland and meadow. i. l. m. 
Chimney Swallows 
Will chimney swallows ruin a chimney? 
I have a colony in our fireplace stone 
chimney. I think it is tile through the 
center of chimney, and our neighbors tell 
us that the birds in building their nests so 
construct them that they shut off the draft 
entirely. I love the birds, hut I cannot 
afford to have them spoil my chimney. I 
wonder if the little fellows are not 
wronged? My place is a “sanctum sanct¬ 
orum” for birds; no cats allowed. 
Franklin, Mass. e. e. g. 
The nest of the chimney swallow is a 
little shelf of sticks stuck together with 
glue. It is about two-thirds as large as 
the saucer on which to set your morning 
cup of coffee. It is perhaps 3 or 4 in. 
wide, and projects out into the chimney a 
little m<?re than 2 in. Of course it ob¬ 
structs the draft a little, perhaps as much 
as the soot that might accumulate from 
burning soft coal for a week. In chim¬ 
neys which had been in use as nesting 
places for years I have never seen any 
old nests. Perhaps they burn up when 
the chimney is in use in the Winter. Per¬ 
haps they simply loosen and fall down. 
Personally I have sometimes objected to 
the noise of the young birds in the chim¬ 
ney, but have never seen anything to make 
me think there was any other reason for 
keeping them out. Whatever cleaning is 
necessary to keep the chimney free from 
soot will take care of the nests that may 
be built there. Alfred c. weed. 
Suspected Foul Brood 
The brood dies in the cell in my hive, 
and all the brood look like drones. Can 
you tell me anything about the disease? 
Smithburg, Md. c. a. k. 
I suspect you have a drone laying 
queen, complicated with either some brood 
disease or poison from sprayed fruit trees. 
I believe it is the latter, as you do not 
say anything about a bad odor, which 
would be very noticeable in case of Amer¬ 
ican foul brood, and present to a less ex¬ 
tent in European or black-brood. If this 
strong gluepot odor is not present, get a 
new Italian queen and introduce, mean¬ 
while keeping up the strength of the col¬ 
ony by giving a card of hatching brood if 
possible. 
There is now a remedy for American 
foul brood, but it will not pay to use it 
unless there are a number of colonies to 
treat. With one or two colonies having 
American foul brood, shake the bees into 
new, clean hives, supplied with founda¬ 
tion. The old hives can be disinfected by 
holding over a blaze until the inside is 
slightly charred. The diseased combs 
should be immediately boiled for the wax 
or destroyed by fire. g. w. b. 
The great volume of traffic moving over 
the New York Central Lines demands con¬ 
stant, vigilant care of tracks and equip¬ 
ment, in order that New York Central 
standards of service may be maintained. 
Eighty thousand New York Central em¬ 
ployees are engaged in repairing and re¬ 
placing things that wear out, and the 
cost of this worklastyear was $245,000,000, 
an average of $670,000 a day. It took 36 
per cent of our receipts. 
Since the termination of Government war 
operation of the railroads, four years ago, 
our expenditures for maintenance (exclu¬ 
sive of very large expenditures for better- 
mentsand improvements) have aggregated 
$752,000,000—an amount equal to more 
than forty per cent of the total invest¬ 
ment in the New York Central Lines. 
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THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
333 West 30th St., New York City 
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