Interest the average country boy in bird banding and he will search for nests with this in mind, instead of with the idea of taking the eggs to 
start a "collection.” Youngsters like this find many nests every year 
a hand and the whole owl family was removed and placed in a 
basket. Fortunately it was not a bad boy who had found these 
birds and he brought them very carefully to me to be banded. I 
kept them for two days, feeding them raw beefsteak and show¬ 
ing them to many friends, and could easily have made permanent 
pets of the two fuzzy-coated youngsters. But after they had re¬ 
ceived their bands they were taken out in the evening — the be¬ 
ginning of their day — and, by the aid of a pocket flash lamp, 
were placed in a hollow chestnut, which was more roomy than 
their first home. Where the little fellows are now I cannot say, 
but I shall look eagerly into 
each tree hollow that I find, 
and perhaps some day I will 
come upon a sleepy gray 
screech owl wearing an in¬ 
scribed leg band, and shall rec¬ 
ognize him as one of my old 
friends, “The Twins.” 
Owls are not the only early 
banding subjects, for it was 
on the eighteenth day of 
April, 1913, that I found a 
mother Carolina wren feeding 
her young at a place near 
Yonkers, N. Y. And such a 
unique situation as this bird 
had chosen as a home for her 
young ones ! There was a pile 
of old branches and rubbish 
near the edge of a back yard, 
and in the midst of this heap 
there lay on its side an old 
pail in which tar had been 
mixed. Someone had thrown 
a strawberry box into the pail, 
and fortunately it had remained right side up, thus making an ex¬ 
cellent receptacle for the nest, and the pail became this bird’s home 
from the storms of late March and April. The mother wren was 
one of the boldest creatures that I have ever photographed. She 
twitched about among the twigs, almost hopping on my feet, and 
making me think that I could pick her up in my hand. She 
ignored the camera and fed her babies when my head was under 
the focusing cloth barely two feet away, and on page 13 you see 
this fearless mother at the door of her quaint little cottage carry¬ 
ing a white grub to her nestlings. 
The best places for the banding of large numbers of birds are 
on certain islands off our coasts where the immense colonies of 
sea birds are to be found, and it is, of course, advisable that the 
greatest possible number of birds should be banded each season, 
in order that the percentage of returns may be large in propor¬ 
tion. Not everyone, however, is in a position to visit bird col¬ 
onies, nor can it be said that the most unique returns may be ex¬ 
pected from that source; but there is hardly a rural or suburban 
district where some birds are not available for banding, 
and the person doing only a few isolated birds each vear 
large number 
When "The Twins” were almost old enough to fly they were removed 
from the nest hollow and banded 
may be rewarded with the greatest results. In England, for in¬ 
stance, on the sixth of May, 1911, a swallow was “ringed” by 
some person who was able to do only a few birds each season 
about his home. No doubt he was of the opinion that his slight 
efforts would count for nothing, but this swallow was caught at a 
farmhouse near Utrecht, Natal, South Africa, the bird having 
made a journey of over six thousand miles from the land of his 
nativity. Bird banding in Europe has been carried on for many 
more years than it has in this country, but we have secured a 
of valuable returns, and a few of these in detail 
may be of interest to the 
readers of House & Garden. 
A field sparrow was marked 
at Sioux City, Iowa, in June, 
1910, and was discovered in a 
field on the outskirts of Sioux 
City during the latter part of 
May, 1911, while a robin 
banded at Kingston, Rhode 
Island, on August 4th, 1908, 
was taken at Kingston, R. I., 
on April 9, 1909, only a few 
hundred yards from the very 
spot where the bird had been 
banded the year before. 
One bird student marked a 
bluebird at West Allis, Wiscon¬ 
sin, on July 5th, 1909, and it 
was killed by a shrike or butch¬ 
er-bird at Evansville, Illinois, 
April 1, 1912, the bird being 
picked up by a farmer of the 
latter place. The bluebird was 
probably on its way north, it 
being the season for the spring 
migration, and may easily have been headed for Wisconsin. 
These three instances would seem to indicate a tendency on the 
part of the birds mentioned to drift back toward the locality 
where they were born, as all of these three were fledglings when 
banded. The following two returns are interesting in that they 
give some indication of where individual birds raised in Northern 
States winter in the South, although we must, of course, estab¬ 
lish many more examples before stating anything conclusively on 
the subje:t. 
A robin banded at Bangor, Maine, on July 8, 1910, was cap¬ 
tured at Nashville, Tenn., on February 21st, 1911, and a red¬ 
winged blackbird tagged at Charleston, Rhode Island, June 8th, 
1912, was shot by a man on a rice plantation at Green Pond, Col¬ 
leton Co., South Carolina, on November 2nd, 1912. 
It can be seen, therefore, that the birds well known to all of 
us—indeed, we might say the birds of the house and garden—are 
the very ones that are the most satisfactory subjects, and it is 
therefore hoped that the army of investigators who are engaged 
at present in looking into these puzzling bird problems will 
be steadily increased, and you can be one of them. 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
July, 1913 
