Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 214, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1915 — IN THE CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN THE CITIES

New York City Trying to Lure Back Its Birds NEW YORK. —As the inaugural move of a widespread campaign for luring back the little songbirds so rapidly disappearing from the parks and suburbs of the city, the New York Zoological society has established an

exhibit of nesting and feeding boxes In the Zoological park, with signboards and labels advising the bird lover where each model may be obtained and what birds are most likely to be attracted by It Lee S. Crandall, assistant curator of birds of the society, in a bulletin makes it plain that if some remedial action is not taken in the near future the songbird is going to forsake New York, probably never to return. Persecution of the feathered songsters by

man, the growing congestion of the outspreading city and the recently improved methods of forestry conservatism are given as the chief reasons for the state of affairs in this respect. The application of modern forestry methods, the assistant curator writes, has so trimmed the branches of the old orchards and so carefully removed all dead or decayed forest trees and insect-harboring undergrowth “that many of our useful birds are hard pressed Indeed to find a cranny in which to deposit their eggs or cover in wtych to. search for food.” Among the other shelters of the park exhibit is one of the portable class, consisting of a small car provided with small wheels which travel on a wire strung from a window to some convenient point, and another equipped with an automatic feeder of the hopper type now used by poultrymen. Mr. Crandall says that suet holders furnish the simplest and probably the best method for feeding insectivorous birds, such as woodpeckers and nuthatches.