Page:How to Have Bird Neighbors.pdf/55

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have a different name, and let the English sparrow alone keep the name he has dishonored.

The boy has told me that, to keep English sparrows from increasing around his place, he destroys their eggs wherever he can find them. He said that one pair of sparrows seemed to blame the bluebirds for it, and in revenge destroyed the bluebirds' nest.

We kept up the shooing and handclapping whenever English sparrows visited the wren house. After a while the wrens began to understand that we were trying to help them, and went on with their nesting. They put tiny sticks and twigs into other rooms of their house also,—and now there was a perfect concert of wren music all the time. Before night two more entrances were blocked. Some of the twigs that these wrens brought had such long thorns on them that they would not go inside at all. But this did not discourage the plucky wrens. They just dropped them to the ground and fetched others.

The next day another pair of wrens came. It seemed as if wrens had a way of letting their friends know where some nice apartments could be had. I was so eager to accommodate as many wrens as would come that I had made some one-room houses for them. One was mounted in a pear tree; another under the overhang of the garage roof.

This last wren pair seemed quite bewildered with so many houses to choose from, and all of them different. Whenever Mrs. Wren showed preference for