FEEDING BIRDS 



A bird table is now becoming a necessary piece of furniture 

 in country gardens. But it is well to remember that January 

 and February (not December) are the months when the duty 

 of feeding birds is most insistent, and the profit greatest. 

 Birds can endure starvation in early winter ; indeed they 

 naturally then reduce their feeding ; but as the days lengthen 

 they grow as hungry as a cabbage caterpillar. Not seldom 

 the beginnings of this access of hunger will coincide with a 

 period when the frost cuts off all food-supplies, save the 

 scraps of dead creatures stuck in the resin of the fir and 

 larch, or in the cracks of the bark. Happily this winter 

 amusement and duty of feeding birds is becoming very 

 popular in England; and abroad the Governments are 

 gravely considering the economical wisdom of encouraging 

 the practice. Indeed every year more of our gardens — even 

 the little rectangles in towns and suburbs — are becoming 

 sanctuaries to which birds of many species resort from the 

 worst of all enemies, hunger, and for the best of all pleasures, 

 a nesting home. 



During the twentieth century we have seen birds grow 

 perceptibly tamer and vastly more numerous. It is a 

 wonderful addition to life to eat with the birds, as it were, to 

 tempt them on to the window-sill, if not within the room. 



