How to Attract the Birds 



After family cares are over and our rollicking, 

 tuneful bobolink has stopped singing — and he is the 

 first to become silent — he changes his beautiful 

 black, white and buff suit for a winter one ot 

 streaked brown like his mate's, because they will go 

 South to live among the ripe brown grasses and 

 sedges. In spite of Nature's kindly protective 

 colouring, thousands of bobolinks (reedbirds, so- 

 called) fall a prey to pot-hunters every autumn when 

 the best beefsteak costs only twenty cents a pound, 

 and it takes a dozen plucked reedbirds to make a 

 handful ! 



Who that did not know him the year round 

 would recognize the bright-yellow, black-winged 

 little goldfinch of sunny pastures after he has ex- 

 changed his nuptial clothes for the drab-brown 

 family dress ? So cleverly does it match the colour- 

 ing of weedy foraging grounds after frost, that one 

 may pass a flock of goldfinches in late autumn 

 without suspecting there is a bird in the field. 

 Except for their waving flight one might mistake 

 them for a flock of sparrows. 



Arctic birds, like Arctic animals, turn white in 

 winter so as to be scarcely detected in the snowy 

 landscape. It is a poor rule that won't work both 

 ways : white enemies are quite as likely to approach 

 unseen as white prey is likely to escape. Occasion- 

 ally a great snowy owl comes over the Canadian 

 border, — a ghostly apparition among our birds. The 

 ptarmigan, which lives above the timber line in our 

 western mountains as well as at the far north, is 

 white while the snow lasts, but by the time there 

 are eggs and chicks to be covered the mottled 



lOO 



