FEEDING WILD BIRDS IN WINTER. 113 



have come up through the fields and remained for 

 the last two months, not only feeding with other 

 birds on the lawn, but visiting the poultry yard, 

 picking up grain with the fowls, and several times 

 they have also roosted in the henhouse. The 

 lovely grey and orange nuthatches haunt the 

 dining-room windows, where they share the nuts 

 which are daily bestowed upon the squirrels. 



This place, with its surrounding woods and 

 gardens, where all birds have been protected and 

 encouraged for the last twenty years, naturally 

 abounds with feathered fowl of many kinds, but in 

 most gardens, even somewhat near a town or city, 

 birds maybe coaxed to come by constantly placing 

 attractive food where they can pick it up without 

 danger from cats. This is best arranged either in 

 a basket hung at a window or in a box fastened to 

 a high pole. Any one may find pleasure in watch- 

 ing the various kinds of birds flying to and fro, 

 and, for an invalid, it would be adding a charm 

 to daily life, besides doing a kindness to a useful 

 tribe of creatures which are too often persecuted 

 rather than jealously protected, as they ought to 

 be, in return for the valuable services they render 



to the gardener and agriculturist. 



8 



