An Experiment in Songbird Management

A PROJECT for increasing the number of birds to control nut weevils in an orchard of blight-resistant chestnuts at the Bureau of Plant Industry Experiment Station near Glenn Dale, Maryland, was carried on cooperatively by that organization and the U.S. Biological Survey from 1926 to 1931. Entomological and management results have been reported in the papers listed in the terminal bibliography, and the more strictly ornithological findings are presented in this communication. The area involved was about two and one-half acres the first two years and three and a half the last four. It was pretty fully occupied by the chestnut orchard and a rose garden, yet had ample openings. A bird bath, a martin house, and at the maximum 98 individual bird boxes including five sizes were installed. Response was good and, there being no hole-nesting species on the tract before, the threefold to fourfold increase in birds was clear gain. The bird population was multiplied but the nut weevils were not perceptibly reduced in numbers; their increase, however, may have been checked. Ornithological gleanings are here summarized as 'Nest Analyses' and 'Nesting Results.' NEST ANALYSES On November 18, 1926, E. A. Preble helped me to collect twenty birds' nests from trees in the experimental chestnut orchard. Materials used in twelve of these (considered to be correctly identified) are reported on here. The insects and spiders using these nests as winter quarters were treated in papers by McAtee (1927b) and Malloch (1927b).