68 THE BIRD GROWN UP 
or the West Indies, others to Central America, 
and a few even into South America, — except 
the woodpecker, who gets his insects under the 
bark of trees. 
The summer birds of the Western States nearly 
all go to Mexico for the winter. 
The little birds who stay with us are only 
those who can eat seeds, as I said, or the eggs 
and insects to be found in the crevices of the 
bark on trees. These birds do a great deal of 
good, for each one destroys thousands of insects 
before they have come out of the egg. One 
small chickadee will eat several hundred insect 
eggs in a day. 
These little fellows can almost always find 
their food, for the snow seldom covers the trunks 
of the trees; but now and then in the winter 
we have an ice storm; then the trunks and 
branches are buried under ice, so that the birds. 
suffer, and perhaps will starve to death. 
In such a time it will be kind of you who 
live in the country to put out food for them. 
You can give them any table scraps of meat or 
vegetables, or bread, chopped fine for their tiny 
mouths, with corn or grain for bigger birds. 
What they all like best to eat is suet, — which 
the butcher will give you, — chopped fine, or, 
better still, nailed or tied to a branch or a fence, 

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