SPARROWS AND OTHER FINCHES 61 



One plan I tried depended for its action 

 on the difference of weight between a sparrow 

 and a tit. It was the opposite of the arrange- 

 ment by which sparrows are prevented from 

 appropriating the food put out for pheasants, 

 where the pheasant opens the corn-box by 

 his weight on the perch outside. I tried so 

 to arrange the balance that the heavier 

 sparrow was cut off from the hole which con- 

 tained the food, whilst for the tit it remained 

 open. The practical drawback to this plan 

 was the nicety of adjustment required, for 

 though a sparrow is more than twice the 

 weight of a torn-tit, the difference between the 

 two weights is little more than a quarter of 

 an ounce. 



One of the most successful contrivances, 

 after all, is one of the simplest. Take a tin 

 canister (one that I used was three inches 

 long by 2-J in diameter), hang it open end 

 downwards by a string brought through a 

 hole in the other end, to this string fasten 

 inside the tin a bit of wood about the thick- 

 ness of a large pencil, and let it hang like 

 the clapper in a bell, projecting a quarter of 

 an inch below the bottom rim of the tin. 

 Plaster all round the inside of the tin with 

 fat, leaving the wooden tongue in the middle 

 free for the birds to cling to. In this way 

 both great-tits and tom-tits can feed them- 

 selves without difficulty, but only one sparrow 

 in twenty can manage with much ado to hold 



