12 JOURNAL OF maim-: ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Notes on the Winter Birds of 1906=07. 



By Cordelia J. Stanwood. 



I. 



Feeding the Birds. 



When persons live in the country where the snow is deep and 

 the thermometer sometimes runs as low as 36 below zero, neces- 

 sarily there are days when the fireside is the most comfortable place. 

 This was particularly true in the winter of 1906-07, a winter that 

 the oldest inhabitants of Maine as well as scientific data affirmed to 

 have been the most severe in fifty years. At this time of year to 

 have the birds fly about the window and sing; as if it were the cheer- 

 iest day in spring is an unspeakable comfort. Summer seems almost 

 at hand. 



To encourage my bird neighbors to visit me that winter, I kept 

 bits of suet tied to a nail driven in at the side of each window of my 

 room, and all over the large balm-of-Gilead tree in front of the 

 house. (1 made a sling by fastening a large piece of suet firmly to 

 each end of a strong twine about a foot long just as boys make 

 horse-chestnut slings to throw over telegraph wires. When I tossed 

 these slings over a branch, they struck with such force that the cord 

 was bound around the branch several times. The sling fastened 

 itself so securely that the fiercest gales were unable to dislodge the 

 suet.) After that one Chickadee came for a time, then two, next 

 six and a Red-breasted Nuthatch. These visited the tree perhaps a 

 dozen times a day. 



The Nuthatch, for so handsome a bird, behaved very badly on 

 his arrival. In the beginning, doubtless, he saw Chickadees coming 

 to the woods with large bits of suet in their beaks. Perhaps he had 

 feasted on these same particles of suet that the Chickadees had stored 

 away in the bark. Next he followed the Chickadees and liked the 

 suet so much that he decided if a little were good all would be better. 

 Instead of eating, he spent most of his time in driving the Chicka- 

 dees away from the suet tree. The Chickadees allowed the Nuthatch 



