HOUSE AND GARDEN 
. July, 1913 
13 
single case was the 
band discovered on 
the bird’s foot un¬ 
til after the victim 
was picked up or 
taken in the hand. 
Some of the recov- 
e r e d birds had 
worn their bands 
for only a few 
days, but others 
had carried them 
without incon¬ 
venience for two 
or three years; 
some had traveled 
only a few hundred 
yards from the 
scene of banding 
before being heard 
from, while others 
had covered thou¬ 
sands of miles. But 
practically all contributed their portion to the little nucleus of 
exact information already at hand concerning the conduct of 
individual birds. 
The bird banding idea is one which is bound to become popular; 
there is something about it that makes a wide appeal. As many 
as a dozen young men and boys on Staten Island (a suburban 
community) have come to me for bird bands, and by the first 
week in June of the present year had located over a hundred 
birds’ nests. Instead of taking the eggs for the purpose of 
starting “collections,” as several of these boys had done in 
previous years, the nests were jealously guarded so that the 
young might become ripe for banding. One young fellow was 
so keen as to locate over thirty nests, and of each one of these he 
kept a record in a note book, stating whether the nest contained 
eggs or young, and setting down a date in the future when the 
fledglings would likely be old enough to be banded. (The 
proper time for this is about two or three days before the young 
are ready to depart from the nest.) Several of these enthusiasts 
of whom I speak are Boy Scouts, and there exists between them 
a friendly but sharp rivalry in the matter of locating nests. Some 
Have you a Carolina wren nesting in your brush heap or stone 
wall? This one selected an old pail for a home 
of the boys were not familiar with many birds 
in the beginning, but when they found that 
they were not under any circumstances to band 
a single bird of whose identification they were 
not positive, they saved their money and 
bought bird books and guides; borrowed field 
glasses and telescopes; made written descrip¬ 
tions of the plumage markings, etc., of unfa¬ 
miliar birds; and three or four even undertook 
to make bird photographs with kodaks and 
other cameras which they owned or borrowed. 
In short, they got the bird study mania with 
a vengeance; so much so, in fact, that some of 
the parents feared that school studies might 
be neglected. One boy arose before five in the 
morning, much to the astonishment of his 
mother, left the house without any breakfast, 
and traveled six miles and back before school 
time—all of this for the purpose of putting 
bands on a brood of young phoebes before it 
could be done by a rival Scout. 
It may be a matter of surprise to some to 
His yellow, glassy eyes blinked and stared when brought into the light 
The young screech owls had flourished on a diet of mice, insects and 
other delicacies that the parent birds had brought 
learn that the nesting season of the birds in the vicinity of New 
York begins as early as the end of February, it being a common 
occurrence for the great horned owl to have eggs on the twenty- 
eighth or twenty-ninth of that month. And the young screech 
owls whose comical figures appear in the accompanying illustra¬ 
tions were hatched from eggs that were laid in early April of 
this year, and these youngsters therefore had practically their 
full growth and strength when the nesting season of most birds 
had just begun. These young owls, by the way, began life with 
a very peculiar experience. Their home from the time they 
broke through their shells until they were as large as you see 
them here was in a dark hollow in an old apple tree. Their 
mother had gone forth each night and brought back mice, insects, 
crawfish and other dainties (although you might not consider 
them as such) and on these things the little fellows had flourished 
and were nearly ready to leave their apple tree home on their 
own strong wings when one afternoon a boy happened through 
the orchard and looked into the owls’ private chamber. The two 
babies and the mother snapped their beaks in protest, but in came 
