Birds are the Gardeners’ Best Friends 
By CRAIG S. THOMS 
B IRDS are the gardeners’ best 
friends. Of this fact most 
people are aware; yet 
the few rather than the many 
understand the extent of their 
help in raising each year’s 
crop. 
When the writer was a boy 
on the farm, birds were loved 
in a way and their songs were 
appreciated; but in their relation 
to crops they were regarded as 
enemies rather than as helpers. 
The red-winged blackbird was thought of as the 
robber of planted corn, not as the devourer of 
cutworms; robins, thrushes, purple grackles, and 
many others, were regarded as cherry thieves, not 
as the slayers of worms and insects innumerable, that 
mar fruit and cause imperfect vegetables; the king¬ 
bird was looked upon with favor because he killed 
the flies that bit us—which was a small matter, not 
because he killed the flies that sting fruit, lay eggs 
in it, and make it “wormy”—which is a very large 
matter. 
One who begrudges birds the little fruit which they 
may eat in the fruit season is apt to forget that the 
fruit season is very short, while these helpers are 
working for him the year round. In the winter the 
woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, and brown 
creepers, are literally cleaning up bis trees—gathering 
insect larvae and eggs from trunk and limbs, bark 
creases and knot holes. In the spring, when leaf 
and flower-buds are bursting, when all foliage is 
tender, and insect larvae begin to devour, warblers, 
greenlets, and kinglets, come from the South by 
hundreds to search every delicate crevice and cranny 
of leaf, bud, and blossom; and were it not for these 
mighty pigmy hunters, our trees, fruit, and vege¬ 
tables would literally be at the mercy of insects. 
Then, all summer long there remain with us blue¬ 
birds, wrens, robins, grosbeaks, kingbirds, flickers, 
orioles, thrushes, catbirds, all of which, while inci¬ 
dentally building nests and rearing young, spend 
most of their time protecting our trees, fruit, and 
vegetables. 
The greater portion of the food of these birds con¬ 
sists of noxious insects; and when a bird is not nest¬ 
ing or singing or sleeping it is usually searching for 
food. 
It should be noted also that most birds feed their 
young entirely upon insects; and the open mouth of 
the hungry bird is proverbial. Most of our common 
birds raise two broods a year. Think of the number 
of insects necessary to feed from twelve to sixteen 
young wrens, or eight to ten young 
robins. Young birds grow so 
rapidly that the amount of 
food they eat is simply 
astounding. I have held my 
watch on a mother oriole for 
hours while she fed her young, 
and she would come with 
food every three or four min¬ 
utes, very seldom failing to come 
within five. When young birds fill 
the nest this process goes on 
with only short intervals from 
early morning until evening. 
The important question for every one, however, 
is, how shall the birds be induced to gather their 
insect food in his particular garden ? 
A number of suggestions will here be made, but 
the first, and the most important is, give the birds 
water. Last spring I took a wooden chopping bowl, 
placed in the bottom of it a chunk of sod from the 
roots of which I had washed most of the dirt, filled 
it with water, and set it on a post about two feet high 
which I had driven down in the middle of my back 
lawn. My flower and vegetable garden were only 
a few paces away, and both lawn and garden were 
surrounded with trees. 
There was scarcely a day during the summer when 
birds did not come to drink and bathe. The post 
was made about two feet high to protect the birds 
while bathing, from the cats; and they liked the sod 
in the water, as it made a good safe bed for them to 
bathe upon, and the longer spears of grass sticking 
above the water gave them confidence. 
The reflection from the surface of the water, like 
that from a mirror, could be seen for a long distance, 
and this bird bath became the center of bird life for 
the whole neighborhood. Robins came hopping 
upon the lawn to it; kingbirds descended from the 
clothes line; the flicker shot down from his nest in a 
near-by trunk; orioles came from a neighboring 
orchard; grosbeaks crossed the road from their nest 
in an adjoining yard; catbirds ventured from a clump 
of shrubbery a block away; bluejays darted in, now 
from one direction and now from another, without 
revealing the locality of their home; bluebirds 
dropped down occasionally as though out of clear 
sky; and all the while the wren, whose nest was in a 
box in a corner of the yard, seemed to consider this 
his private bath. 
These birds in coming and going visited every part 
of the yard—trees, garden, bushes, fences. 
It would have been best for the garden had the 
bath been placed on a stake about two feet high 
File Robin Takes a Bath 
n 5 
