16 Wild Bird Guests 



the bird with it. I once kept a turkey vulture 

 in my garden in Massachusetts and though he is 

 naturally a bird of a warmer clime, he remained 

 in perfect health through the very severe winter 

 of 1903-1904, simply because I kept him well 

 supplied with food. That same winter the 

 hardy native birds died in great numbers be- 

 cause they could not get food could not get 

 the fuel to keep the little furnaces going. Ac- 

 cording to the State Ornithologist, Edward Howe 

 Forbush, between ninety and ninety-five out of 

 every one hundred quail in Massachusetts died 

 of starvation that winter. Similar tragedies oc- 

 cur every severe winter, and if we do a little 

 thinking we find that there is no mystery about 

 it. When the trees and bushes are sheathed in 

 ice it must be very difficult and at times impos- 

 sible for the insect-eating birds such as wood- 

 peckers, nuthatches, chickadees and creepers, to 

 get at the insects and larvae which lurk in and 

 below the bark and in the axils of the twigs. 

 And when the ground is covered under a foot or 

 more of snow, how can such birds as sparrows 

 and finches and quail and other seed-eaters dig 

 down under it to get at their food ? Of course 

 some birds find weed-stalks sticking out above 

 the snow and others perhaps switch off onto a 

 diet of berries, but there are many others who 



