Bird lore - Project Puffin

466 Bird - Lore
sanctuaries, to place food in the feeding-boxes. We have proof that Quails
were saved by our systematic feeding during the freezing weather.
We have a petition before Council, asking to have stray cats eliminated.
Live-pigeon shooting by the Rod and Gun Club of Doylestown has been
abolished at our request. Early (4 a.m.) morning walks in the spring enable
us to study migrations, and a night spent in the woods not only tested our
nerves but familiarized us with animal life not visible in the daytime. The
planting of trees on Arbor Days is primarily for the benefit of the birds.
Our membership has increased from 7 to 127 in ten years, and members
range in age from ten years to seventy-five. Our aim is to interest the young,
and we hold most of our illustrated lectures in the public schools and invite
the pupils to attend. One of our bird-sanctuaries is situated in the cemetery,
which is particularly adapted to that purpose, having plenty of water and shade
trees.
—
Elizabeth F. James, President.
Forest Hills Gardens (N. Y ) Audubon Society.—This Society was
founded on the supposition that bird-protection is a legitimate extension of the
Garden City idea, and that both from economic and esthetic standpoints
nothing could be more fitting than that the garden suburb should also be a
bird-sanctuary, because it is an attempt to retain and create within the arti-
ficial limitations of the city the wholesomeness and quality of country life. It
is scarcely necessary to say that the landscape-setting^flowers, shrubbery,
vines, trees, hedges— -needs the further embellishment of the 'hovring melody
of birds.' This is the esthetic side. The economic side is the general recognition
throughout the country that America must conserve her avian wild life in
order that insect pests should be subdued.
The work begun by the Forest Hills Society had peculiar difficulties because
the place was new, there was constant building going on, and little cover for
the birds. There were also, and still are, a large number of English Sparrows,
and the cat problem is a difficult one. In spite of all this the number and variety
of the birds have sensibly increased, and owing to educational work being
done by the Society there is a greater general interest in the subject. A pre-
liminary survey of the property was made by Herbert K. Job, and a Forest
Hills Branch of the National Association of Audubon Societies was organized
in April, 19 14, with about eighty members. Public lectures and meetings fol-
lowed, bird-boxes were put up, winter-feeding begun, fountains and bird-baths
were made a part of the individual house and garden plan wherever possible,
shrubbery was planted with a view to future cover, some work was done among
school-children in the way of special lectures, Audubon literature was dis-
tributed, and a Journeyman's Class of boys was formed to make and sell
bird-houses. One of the boys won the Brooklyn Eagle's gold medal for Kings
County in a recent bird-house competition. Perhaps most interesting of all
are the bulletin boards specially designed and presented to the Society by the