6 THE. A) U,DU-BiQN, (BU Eee 
at our door. Of course the flower garden is a haven for the ruby-throated 
hummingbird and he will nest in the trumpet vine over your porch if you 
are lucky. 
Orchards, the older and more neglected the better, are favorite places 
for bluebirds and rose-breasted grosbeaks. Barns and eaves of out-buildings 
are chosen nesting sites of barn and cliff swallows. Phoebes also use eaves 
but have taken over culverts and bridges as their especial haunts. 
Plowed fields draw their particular birds. The horned lark is ever 
present there and nests in the furrows. In the spring even the kingbirds 
feed there in flocks. 
Cut-over wood lots are favored places of towhees, yellow-breasted chats 
and prairie warblers. As the second growth grows into woods these birds 
leave. A bird club in New York was on the verge of buying such a cut- 
over area in order to preserve the yellow-breasted chat, one of our rarer 
warblers. Fortunately, the members consulted the National Audubon 
Society which told them they would have to set aside a fund to cut back the 
trees every few years to keep it scrubby. They decided not to buy the lot. 
In the winter months so many people are now feeding birds at trays 
and stations around their homes that our winter birds are often more 
common in villages than in woods. During a snow storm there is constant 
activity around the trays. Downy woodpecker, chickadee and tufted tit- 
mouse, cardinal and junco, white-breasted nuthatch and even the rare red- 
breasted nuthatch fly back and forth. 
Most of us have assumed that there were more birds when man settled 
in this country than to-day. While it is true man has destroyed vast fiocks 
of certain birds, such as the passenger pigeon and prairie chicken, has cut 
down forests and drained swamps, yet, in the doing, he has made a greater 
variety of habitats than existed before. And each habitat has developed 
its own life community of birds, animals and plants. Richard H. Pough, on 
the research staff of the National Audubon Society, says, “It is probably 
safe to say that for every land bird that is less abundant to-day than it 
was when the pilgrims landed, five or six kinds are more abundant.’ 
3“Audubon Bird Guide” by Richard H. Pough — Doubleday & Co., 1946, Foreword XXVII. 
fT Ee =e 
Let’s Face the Waterfowl Crisis* 
By JOHN H. BAker, President, National Audubon Society 
THE NATIONAL AUDUBON Society advocates that the hunting of migratory 
waterfowl in North America be discontinued for a year, with the under- 
standing that during that time basie revisions of management and regula- 
tion policies be worked out and adopted. 
A year ago, publicity was given to our opinion that 1946 would be a year 
of acid test of the waterfowl hunting regulation formula. In view of the 
fact that the rising cycle of waterfowl population appeared to have ended 
*From the March-April issue of “Audubon Magazine.’’ 
