Part 1

Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: italic

BOY BIRD HOUSE ARCHITECTURE

By LEON H. BAXTER

Director of Manual Training, Public Schools St. Johnsbury, Vt.

THE BRUCE PUBLISHING CO. MILWAUKEE. WIS.

Copyright, 1920 THE BRUCE PUBLISHING CO.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

It is with much pleasure that I commend to the public this little book regarding the construction of Bird Houses. As Instructor in Nature Study at the Fairbanks Museum it has been my privilege and pleasure to co-operate closely with Mr. Baxter’s work in the manual training department of the local schools. Through his instruction our boys are proud to be considered natural guardians of bird homes in our town, which is veritably a bird sanctuary. About two hundred suitable nesting boxes have been placed in proper localities during the past three years.

The Museum offers prizes each year to the boys of Mr. Baxter’s classes and our exhibit of Bird Houses on the first Saturday in April is an event that attracts many proud parents to inspect the work of their children.

In this little book, Mr. Baxter tells very explicitly just how any one can build suitable houses to attract our native birds.

Just here I would like to say that any town or community that protects its birds, insures its harvests against destruction by insect pests. Therefore the economic value of Bird Houses is even greater than the aesthetic. The results actually accomplished by Mr. Baxter along these lines vouch for the accuracy of the information contained in this little book.

INEZ ADDIE HOWE, Instructor in Nature Study.

The Fairbanks Museum, St. Johnsbury, Vt.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

To the lover of the open, the woods, the fields, and waterways and all of God’s wild things, this book is affectionately dedicated.

To lead the boy and girl toward their proper relationship with their feathered friends of the air, and to instil the feeling of protection toward our native birds, these pages have been written and these designs made.

What is offered between the covers of this little book is the results of study and observation of birds and their ways covering a period of six years.

Each drawing offered is of a proven house, one that has served as a home for some of our songsters and if the directions, here set down, are faithfully followed, equal success will crown the builders’ efforts.

While the greater part of the text is the result of knowledge which the writer has gleaned at first hand, yet the author has several times quoted from the text of the Farmers’ Bulletin No. 621, United States Department of Agriculture, and from a contribution by Edward Howe Forbush, in Bulletin No. 1, published by The National Association of Audubon Societies. Fig. 2, the photograph showing a blue bird entering a box, is by S. P. Brownell, East Barnet, Vt.

LEON H. BAXTER.

St. Johnsbury, Vt. Feb. 2, 1920.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Our Friends the Birds 11

Birds That Adapt Themselves to Nesting Boxes 12

The Bluebirds 13

The Robin 14

The Titmice 14