22 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



into a window upstairs and there she fluttered away at the 

 wrong window, trying to get out, when nobody was looking, 

 until she died, and the little male stayed around there for a 

 week or two apparently mourning for his mate. These birds 

 became so tame we had to keep our windows closed if we wanted 

 to keep them out of the house. 



My oldest boy wanted a birds' Christmas tree. He had 

 heard how the Norwegians put a sheaf of grain on the roof of 

 the barn for the birds at Christmas time, and so he put up a 

 shelf outside a window with a little pine tree on it, putting 

 little bits of meat or suet on the tree, and putting some chaff on 

 the shelf and a little seed or grain. On a cold snowy morning 

 all he had to do was to push the snow off, and the birds came, 

 and soon we had birds galore. We also put up nesting boxes 

 for the birds around the house in different places all winter. 

 We put hay or cotton in them because the chickadees, nuthatches 

 and woodpeckers like to find some place where they can keep 

 their toes warm on winter nights, and we found in some rases 

 they used these boxes ; also, the chickadees used them. Then 

 they nested in one in the spring. 



Many birds are attracted to a window shelf of this kind and 

 sometimes the shelf will be crowded. My friend Bowdish has 

 a photograph of purple finches on his window shelf and some- 

 times he has had twenty-two or twenty-three birds of the same 

 kind on the shelf, and often we had about that number of birds. 

 It is simply a matter of a little care and absolutely no cost to 

 attract these birds around your house where you can protect 

 them. 



Now we come to bird houses. Nowadays in our country we 

 so trim our trees that the natural cavities in which birds nest 

 are nearly all destroyed, and it is a good plan to put out nesting 

 boxes for the birds. If you put them out in the right way you 

 get the birds, — without question you will get them. It is not 

 necessary to have a great ornamental martin house, although 

 that is a fine thing for the purple martin ; but anything will do 

 that is near the right size and the entrance hole about right. 

 A barrel with a zinc roof and some boxes inside for the birds 

 to nest in makes a good cheap martin house. A common box 

 was taken by a bluebird at once because it was the right size and 

 the hole was an inch and a half in diameter and it was put up in 



