Norwich bulletin., 1916-09-09

with DODOl1nkS as COltIlGTS dI1u mers as boy scouts, with parallel col umns of phoned swallows presenting an alignment straighter than a regi- ment on dress parade, with deploy1ng squadrons of gracllles and redwings, and with a rear guard of cuckoos and lzingf1shers, the first division of the avian army has started South well recruited by the Northern invasion. But what can we do to insure it's safe return? We cannot blind the deadly lighthouses along the coast, we cannot stop the tropical storms, nor keep Jack Frost from trying to touch the Everglades with his icy fingers. We think we grow wiser in birdlore, pass protective laws, and adorn our homes with cute breeding devices. But am not at all sure that our winter feeding is an unmixed blessing. The pension CTS are mostly like the tree sparrows and juncos that go back North and help little but in the war on summer insects. Besides the VeTmins last win ter a dozen jays would take our scat tered grain, and crows repeatedly tore down the suet tied near the back door and carried it away in big chunks.
 It is disheartenine to note the de-
 crease in many kinds Of birds and the almost total extinction of a few species. The list is rather a long one:-house wrens, house martins, bluebirds, cat DlfQS, WdXWlnSS, VeSpeT SpdtIoWS' nighthaWks, larlls. quail, wood pewees, crested hycatcher, yellow throated vireo, chat, chestnut sided prairie, parula and Maryland yellow throat Warblers chewink, oven bird, orchard orioles, mourning dove, wood duck, green heron, rail. tip Up, killdeer, up- land blower, sharp skinned and bread
 winged hawks, great horned and mot tied owls. But, you wifi say, there are still plenty of robins, thrushes, chip, field and song sparrows, swallows, SWifts, humners, bobolinks, chehecs and blacl1birds, that kingbirds and ori- oles show an increase in country by
 ways where the elrns this year were not troubled by beetles, and that tanagers, grossbealzs and wood thrushes are heard oftener iE suburban parks. Last year. and again this season, 1 crossed, re crossed, and quartered the side hills where veSper sparroWs used to breed and did net find a nest, though there fnches were seen on the nigratiOns. No martinS in the entire nefghborhood, and 1 have not seen wren OF this circuit of farms this season. Shall we ever again see the long dusky pair of nighthawks eggs by the flat rock in the south moving? We graybeards can remember the time when wrens scolded in nearly every docryard in town and country and bred in all old apple orchards, and when martins made musical country villages, and busy marten boxes were in many parts of Norwich. Shall we ever again in cur own pastures be berated by tue male kilIdeer (vociferus) leading us a wild goose chase, while the female stole away in another direction from her point to point eggs? Will our tee tering friend the spotted sandpiper, become still scarcer? IAnd will 1t even be believed that the tip-up's big con gener, the upland blower, within my recollection, bred on Blue Bashan, and Mccall hills in Bozrah, freely on Plum Island, and one set I found on She tucket Heights across the Shetucket i river, opposite Greeneville?