Page:Bird-lore Vol 04.djvu/92

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Edited by MRS. MAREL OSGUUD WRIGHT (President of the Audubon Society oi the State of Connecticut), Fairﬁeld, Conn. to whom all Communications relating to the work of the Audubon and other Bird Protective Societies should he addressed. Reports, 912., designed ior this department should be sent al least one monlh prior to Ihe dale oi publication.

Alter Legal Protection, What?

It is recognized that giving the bird legal protection against unnecessary death is the ﬁrst step toward establishing its citizenship in the commonwealth, and it is equally well understood that the judicious reading and enforcement of the law is not to be merely the work of a few years but the duty of successive generations. Moreover, if legal protection was a deed accomplished, instead of an uneven and local " declaration of intentions," so to speak, it would not be sufﬁcient to give the freedom of the land; the opportunity for estlblishing the home and earning a living must be offered as it would he to human colonists coming to a region of questionable hospitality.

The liberty to come and starve in a tree— less, arid region of destroyed forests and dwindling watercourses is of little avail in restoring birds to haunts so entirely trans» formed; protection, food and shelter must be the invitation.

I put shelter first. for given proper. i. P., natural shelter of tree. bush, hayrick, the bird will seldom fail of eking out a living, except in the four or five months that ice locks the storehouses and granaries of bark and seeding weeds and uild grass lands

~ In many cases the very means of shelter in themselves offer a food supply, like the red cedars by their berries, the spnices by their cones, and the heavily matted compositae, hy roadsidcs and ﬁeld comers, by their seeds. The least that seeded sunﬂowers, zinnias. asters and marigolds set for the birds of the garden in autumn and winter spread freely along the highways of the migrants, if only the purblind farmer can be made to withhold his stub»scyrhe from the autumnal massacre of the beautiful.

Shelter is the bird's ﬁrst neces ity at all periods of his life. Before birth for thc nest and unhatehcd egg, then pro— tective feather colors to shield the bird until its pininns can bear it to safety. Next woodland shelter for the period of the mall. then shelter of night, foliage or dusky traveling cloak for the southern migration,

In a state of nature, when the succession of growth and decay .nnrthed in the simple path of purposeful evolution, when the crumbling tree oﬂered its sheltering hollow, the maturu tree its stalwart branches, and the sapling its close. low-growing verthlre all went well, but now man must wtlrk out the penalty for man's stupidity, and if he would restore the birds nm only plant trees, but see to it that he plants the trees of the birds’ choice, not his own,

In the forestry now being practiced in this country, as well as in the somewhat scatter- ing Arbor Day planting, the matter of va~ riety and intli 'dual ﬁtness should have more attention. When cleared woodland is to b: rcplanted, or a naked watercourse to he recovered, it is always best to replace the former inhabitants as far as possible, but where the planting is of a bare and newly surveyed suburban town, the dilhculti great and the choice of trees will measure an index to the future bird popula- tion. If one may not expect grapes of thorns. or ﬁgs of thistles, neither can one have Baltimore Orioles in stiri young maples, Catbirds in elms, or Bluebirds, Nuthatches and Chickadees nesting in new apple trees with awful whitewashed trunks,

If you would consider tree. planting from the bird standpoint, make a list of a dozen or ﬁfteen of the birds that were once the common inhabitants of your village, or gar- den and its neighboring byway. and study

shelter

are he in a

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