Evening star., 1937-06-14

A cat which is let indoors at day.
break will be satisfied to stay in until
dark. This will mean that young birds
will thus be protected during the time
they are learning to fly.
If all persons who like cats would
take this precaution, there would be
an end to the common complaint, that
cats kill birds, especially baby birds.
The truth, many will feel, is that
cats kill only small proportion of the
birds placed at their door Tom and
Tabby are commonly, in the popular
mind given too much credit for bird
catching prowess. After many years of
observation we feel safe in asserting
that an average roaming cat may not
kill four birds year, that the general
average would not reach one per year,
If spread over all the cats in the United
States, many of which never get out of
doors at all.
The fact is that many persons find it
convenient to lay the unnecessary deaths
among birds at some door, and rather
than place them elsewhere, think that
it is easy to credit them to the domestic
cat
Many cats, upon being we'll fed, seem
to lose a great deal of the killer instinct.
We have seen a wild rabbit stretched out
on the grass, lying perfectly at east,
within 20 feet of a cat, which paid
absolutely no attention to it. Such a
| picture as this could not be credited by
| these folk who believe cats always on
the lookout for prey.
The more shrubbery, and the larger
| 1t grows, the more song birds nesting in
yard.
This, we believe, is almost automatic.
| Bird feeding during the Winter per-
| hapS has very little to do with it. In
| theory, Of course, the more attention
| you pay to the birds, the better you
| treat them, in all ways, the more Of
| them there will be, and the more Of
! them will nest in your yard.
This is true, but it will not. in itself,
make them build nests. Something else
| seems desirable. Part of this some
thing else" which the birds love un-
| doubtedly is tree. A tree is TO birds
what house is to a human. 1t is
his home, insofar as Nature has made
him and her capable of having such
| emotions. Therefore some one has said,
and correctly enough. that the old song.
| When the Swallows HomeWard Fly. -
| is better music than ornithology. since
birds nest is its home, and when it
flies South again it really flies away
| from home"
| Next to the trees, shrubs and ever
| green's are bird attractors of the first
degree. But that is not all These
must be large and close together, to
make the greatest appeal to birds.
! The overgroWn yard, then, is liked
best by our feathered friends.
In such a yard they find themselves
entirely at home. They make their
| homes in shrubs. in many instances. Our
friendly robin, for instance. likes nothing
better than a great snowfall bush, pref
erably unpruned.
Robins are notoriously careless nest
builders. We had letter recently from
Connecticut asking if robins ever build
on the ground. Occasionally they do.
as instanced IN this letter. a nest found
with four eggs in it in the middle of a
| hay field (Which was carefully moved
| around. Many robins build nests quite
near the ground, in shrubs not more
than or 3 feet from the earth More
| broken robin eggs are found on the
ground than any other sort