PH EeeAUDUBON? BULLETIN iy 
Protecting Birds Against Squirrels 
By Dr. B. H. Warren, West Chester, Pa. 
Red or Pine, the Flying and the little striped Ground Hackey or 
Chipmunk, are all more or less given to destroying birds. 
I have a farmer friend in Northern Pennsylvania who has a sugar 
bush of some 65 acres, many large maple trees, numerous big beech 
trees, some hickory trees, lots of hemlocks, etc. This wooded tract is 
locally famous for Gray Squirrels. Some years back I knew a farmer’s 
boy who one season told me he killed about 75 grays in the place and I 
think he told the truth. | 
There are many Red and Flying Squirrels as well as considerable 
numbers of Ground Squirrels on the premises. 
The farmer loves birds. Several years ago he made and placed on 
trees in the interior, and about edges, especially of this sugar bush, 
100 wooden bird boxes. The first year several of them had tenants, viz.: 
bluebirds, crested flycatchers, woodpeckers and a couple of wren fam- 
ilies. Since then practically no birds have nested in the boxes. Two or 
three years after the boxes were erected, an examination of a number 
was made and it was learned that a lot of them were inhabited by fly- 
ing squirrels; some had gray squirrels as occupants, and a few had mice 
therein. 
On one side of this sugar bush there is a grove of native chestnut 
trees which, before the blight killed nearly 100 or more of the trees, 
produced almost every year a large crop of nuts. At the present time 
I understand some of the trees still survive and bear fruit. These nuts 
were and are most desirable food for squirrels as are fruits of other trees 
in the sugar bush. The sugar bush is quite a good place for Ruffed 
Grouse in season, and in hunting them in winter I have often noticed 
there are very few old birds’ nests to be seen in trees or shrubbery. 
Boxes erected about the buildings on the same farm, where the 
family resides, have nearly every year a few visitors such as bluebirds, 
wrens and crested flycatchers as breeders. The squirrels do not harbor 
about the farmer’s house and other buildings near to same. 
Under date of October 1, 1923, Mr. W. B. Bell, Acting Chief, Bureau 
of Biological Survey, Washington, D. C., writes as follows: 
\ a general proposition in the East, squirrels—Gray, Black, Fox, 
“Dear Dr. Warren: 
“Your letter of recent date relative to the carnivorous habits of the 
Fox Squirrel has been received. 
“We have no definite original data respecting the destruction of 
birds or their eggs by the Fox Squirrel. Frank E. Wood, however, in the 
