Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/390

386 population. Its background is the domestic landscape—village, hedgerow and park; no wide tracts of uncultivated land or of wilderness to lure birds away. In America vast numbers of birds still sequester themselves in wilderness solitudes undisturbed by men, and even in the settled districts many of the more shy species find congenial haunts in the depths of undergrowth some distance from habitations. On the other hand, there are some like the grackle or crow blackbird, the robin and the bluebird, the catbird, the chipping and song sparrows that seem to prefer to dwell about the homes of men. Indeed, it is quite true, that many of our native birds have found a certain advantage in this affiliation with the human population, at least so far as the food problem is concerned. The blackbird flocks that swarm over the corn lands in early autumn have certainly not diminished, rather have they increased, since the first days of settlement. The bobolink has probably widened its range with the increased area of cultivation. The crow, though a wary tenant of the farm lands, nesting and roosting away from the haunts of men, is still a prominent figure in the landscape of agricultural districts. Many sparrows are gleaners in the shorn fields and pastures, and about the barns and door-yards. Orchards have become a favorite resort, affording an abundance of food for numerous bird families. Great numbers of migrating birds, especially wood warblers, follow the bloom of the fruit trees from south to north in the spring to feed on the insects that infest the buds and blossoms. Not so many years ago, before the larger cities had entirely outgrown their earlier village character, the Baltimore oriole wove its hanging nest here and there in some shade tree along a busy street or in some city square or old town garden. Its rich warble and brilliant color were truly a refreshing sound and sight in the June days, a touch of the woodland life now rarely if ever to be met with in the great overgrown centers of trade.

In England one is impressed with the abundance of individuals among birds which have become dependent upon man and his work. In America a process of adjustment is going on which will unquestionably bring about a similar status in the bird population as more and more of the wild land is cleared and cultivated. In the human history of progress and discovery many delicately adjusted points in the balance of nature are disturbed, entailing often complex and widespread changes in the life and habits of the native fauna. Such changes as we have pictured are small fragments in the history of a country, but they possess great interest as showing how remotely and by what strange means causes and effects operate. Man appears in a new land, clears its face of timber and builds his home. By and by birds from the distant prairie lands find their way into his fields. The swift forsakes the hollow tree to build in the settler's chimney, and the swallow leaves the overhanging tree-trunk and rocky ledge for the shelter of the eaves