Volume XXIV 
November, 1913 
Number 5 
BIRD CALLERS WHOSE LIFE STORIES YOU SHOULD KNOW—INCIDENTS WHICH HELP 
TO DEMONSTRATE THE TREMENDOUS ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR NON-GAME BIRDS 
by T. Gilbert Pearson 
Secretary of the National Audubon Societies 
Photographs by Howard H. Cleaves 
A T Montclair, N. J., there lives a man who receives visitors 
every day of the year and he asserts that he never grows 
weary of their presence. They are a lively set of callers, and all 
day long they disport about the lawn and garden at will. They 
never find fault with their host, talk about themselves, nor fail to 
relish the food which is spread for them with a bounteous hand. 
Constantly they move about from place to place, singly or in 
groups. They chatter much as they go and often burst into song. 
There is no member of the household who does not regret when 
one of them departs. Some of these merry guests make their 
home there the year around. Some come in winter, others in 
summer, and still others, whose homes are in the Far North, 
pause only for a few days in autumn or drop ill for a song or a 
bite to eat in spring when returning home. 
Do you ask who are these joyous visitors—these marvelously 
welcome guests? Here are some of their names ; perhaps you are 
acquainted with most of 
them. There are the brown 
thrasher and the wood 
thrush, the robin, the blue¬ 
bird and the pewee—these 
are to be seen almost every 
day in spring and summer. 
Often the chipping sparrow 
and some of the warbler 
family are to be found at 
the same time. Late one 
summer evening I heard 
the long-drawn, shivering 
cry of a little screech owl 
issuing from the pine grove 
that surrounded the house. 
“He is one of the most 
welcome of guests,” said 
my host, “and sometimes 
his big cousin, the barred 
owl, pays us a visit. I like 
the cries of night birds,” 
he continued. “The shriek 
of the owl, the wail of the 
whip-poor-will, and occa¬ 
sionally the plaintive note 
of an awakened pewee, or the midnight song of the field sparrow, 
all have the effect of making me forget for a time the fact that 
I am near a great city, and in fancy I live over again those times 
when I camped in the wilderness far from the abode of man.” 
Then he told me many things about his little trusting friends 
and how he has to guard them constantly or they would be de¬ 
stroyed. Boys, he said, sometimes tried to kill them with slings 
and air rifles, or would slip on to the place, when they thought 
neither he nor the gardener was on watch, with a view of rob¬ 
bing the nests. 
The English sparrows, he declared, were a great nuisance and 
should be exterminated as far as possible on every estate, for 
not only do they eat the food placed on his feeding shelves for the 
other birds, but they constantly steal straw and grass from the nests 
of the robin and thrush and make a practice of attempting to take 
possession of every box that is erected for the accommodation of 
the wrens and bluebirds. 
A colony of foreign 
laborers had their head¬ 
quarters perhaps a mile 
away, and these sons of 
sunny Italy are all pro¬ 
nounced killers of birds. 
Sundays and other holidays 
find many of them in the 
woods and fields with their 
guns. No bird’s life is safe 
when these hunters are 
near, for they seem to eat 
with marvelous relish any 
feathered creature which 
may fall to their guns, 
regardless of its size or 
beauty. 
Of all the enemies with 
which wild birds about a 
town have to contend there 
is none so destructive as 
the domestic cat. These 
household pets, so docile 
and harmless when sleep¬ 
ing on the hearth, assume 
If there are cedars or other evergreens, or even junipers, about your place, the chipping 
sparrows are quite sure to choose them as nesting sites 
(283) 
