Massachusetts Audubon Society 7 



Those stormy days I made shelters for the food with boxes so that snow 

 would not cover it, so they could always find something to eat. We have 

 been out many mornings and cleared away the snow and put out the grain 

 before we had our breakfast, before it was light, because some come so very 

 early. I noticed that it was song sparrows and tree sparrows who came so 

 early. I feed fine chick-feed and sunflower seed and corn for blue jays. I 

 had some old substitute flour which I have mixed up with baking powder 

 and milk or water, as I had it, and baked like biscuit and broken it up, and 

 the starlings and blue jays loved it. I also have three suet-boxes which have 

 to be filled at least once a week. Then I throw out other things I think they 

 will eat. I have already fed 100 pounds of grain, 30 pounds of it clear sun- 

 flower seed. The chickadees and purple finches come and eat from my win- 

 dow-sill. This is my first winter for purple finches, and the chickadees don't 

 like to have them come one bit. It's really funny to see them. I have a big 

 flock of tree sparrows; one cannot count them, hvA I should say there were 

 30 or 40. And I think there are some other kinds with them, as some are 

 larger and they vary in color. I notice some are much more brown on head 

 and back. My daily visitors are starlings (have seen 20 here at one time) , 

 nuthatch, chickadee, brown creeper, downy woodpecker, hairy woodpecker, 

 blue jays (12 here this morning altogether), purple finch, tree sparrow, song 

 sparrow, junco, and last, but not least, English sparrow. A crow came one 

 day and got a piece of bread. Have also had the evening grosbeaks visit me 

 twice during the winter — only saw two. 



My station is near my kitchen window, only about ten to twenty feet 

 away, so I really do not notice them much only when I am at the sink, 

 washing dishes, etc., so that I may have had other visitors I do not know 

 about. They sing me the most beautiful songs now out there — even now, 

 while I write, I can hear them. Altogether, I feel that this has been the most 

 successful winter of our bird station. Those cold, heavy snowstorms we had, 

 to look out there and see so many birds eating, it was grand, and, having 

 them so near the house, one can see them so distinctly, eating and then 

 roosting in the bushes to get a chance to eat again. 



Mrs. Wilkinson Crossley. 



PRIDE'S CROSSING 



Among other birds, we have had a large flock of robins this last week. 

 They were especially interested in a pile of seaweed, exposed when our 

 men dug off" the snow to get potatoes out of a pit. They stayed about for 

 three or four days eating barberries and sometimes seeds, but not many; 

 now they seem to have gone. 



Katherine Loring. 



This has been a remarkable year here with the birds. Our house is 

 almost within a stone's throw of the sea, and the piazza faces it. We have 

 fed the birds continually with various kinds of seeds in sheltered spots of 

 the piazza, also on an improvised table at a short distance on the high snow- 

 bank in front of the house. 



A container with suet has hung from a branch near by. Since about the 

 first of January we have had numbers of juncos; tree sparrows and chicka- 

 dees appeared, the latter climbing about the vines and pecking at the suet 

 and becoming very friendly. The blue jays have been constant visitors, and 



