4 Wild Bird Guests 



hundred and twenty-five. We went out to play 

 with them for a while almost every day, and 

 by and by they seemed to look for our coming. 

 We would sit on the well-trampled snow we had 

 prepared for their feeding ground, and from the 

 trees about us they would come down in a musi- 

 cal shower, to alight upon our heads and shoul- 

 ders and to feed from our hands. It was such 

 fun that sometimes even when the thermometer 

 registered from ten to fifteen degrees below 

 zero we would sit there feeding them, photo- 

 graphing them, or often simply watching them, 

 until we were almost too numb to get up. 



Sometimes in winter the redpolls come to 

 Meriden in flocks aggregating many hundreds, 

 and there are usually a number of pine siskins 

 among them. At such times the streets of the 

 village are alive with birds, and their cheerful 

 twitterings make it seem as though spring had 

 come back several weeks in advance. These 

 little birds alight in the dooryards and swarm 

 over the piazzas like flies on a sugar bowl, and 

 they will feed from the hands of anyone who has 

 the patience to stand still in the snow for a little 

 while. I have sat down among them, and had 

 both species not only take food from my hand 

 but treat me very much as they would a bush or 

 a stump. 



