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.