Harmful Blessings
Even while we are wondering at our birds we are some- times disposed to ask whether the blessing is unmixed. The starlings knock down and eat our best apples, the tits more neatly puncture them ; the jays and finches and tits devour our peas, and blackbirds and thrushes rob our berried bushes of their autumnal and winter brightness. But these are as well worth their keep as the ox that treads out the corn. A striking example of the value of tits, which are much more actively encouraged than any other sort of bird, has been pro- vided by a large-scale experiment. In a park whose .fine oak trees were periodically quite defoliated by green caterpillars, no fewer than 15o nesting-boxes were fixed to bushes. About half of these were adopted, and one result has been the com- plete saving of the oak leaves. The experiment proved a second point in natural history : the unfortunate fondness of the grey squirrels for the eggs and young of birds. They attacked some of these boxes with such persistence that they enlarged the holes sufficiently to enable them to ravage the contents of the nests. The grey squirrel is certainly not worth his keep—at any rate, within this island. He is regarded as well worth it in parts of the United States. I shall never forget seeing a butcher's shop in Albany as abundantly hung with the bodies of grey squirrels as any game-shop with pheasants.
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