The Bird Department 



By a. a. Allen, Ph.D. 

 ^^ssistaiit Professor of Ornithology, Cornell University 



ATTRACTING THE WINTER BIRDS 



ONE of the reasons for the present wide-spread 

 interest in birds and bird-study has been the 

 possibility, in recent years, of gaining an inti- 

 mate knowledge of some of them in a comparatively 

 easy manner. In the days when it was considered neces- 

 sary to shoot a bird before anything could be learned 

 about it, the number of 

 ornithologists and the num- 

 ber of bird-lovers was rela- 

 tively small. 



The things that were 

 learned, while of greatest 

 importance to science and 

 the cause of ornithology, 

 were not the things that 

 would serve to interest the 

 laymen. The bird's skin 

 and skeleton exhibited in 

 the museum, like the stone 

 and mortar from which the 

 building was made, attract- 

 ed only passing interest 

 from the crowds. When 

 the living bird was exhib- 

 ited in a cage in the zoo, 

 the crowds stopped for a 

 moment longer, and now 

 that the time has come 

 when the stufTed specimen 

 and the caged prisoner are 

 giving way before the wild 

 free bird, the whole popu- 

 lace stops to watch the 

 small creature which, un- 

 afraid and unconcerned, 

 goes about its life, not in 

 the obscurity of the woods 



or fields, but in the yard, in the tree next to the house, on 

 the very window sill. When bird-lovers discovered how 

 to attract and tame wild birds by the simple process of 

 offering them the food which they liked and needed, they 

 unwittingly so simplified the introduction to the study of 

 birds that thousands of people have stepped across the 

 threshold which formerly they hesitated to cross. They 

 have now, through their knowledge of birds, acquired an 

 interest in the out-of-doors, an interest which increases a 

 hundredfold their enjoyment of walks afield, camping and 

 outing trips, which breaks the hum-drum of every day, and 

 even adds a spark of life to the walk to and from business. 

 1102 



A FRIENDLY CHICKADEE 



Most birds learn to trust the people who feed them regularly and sev- 

 eral species ordinarily discard their fear and even come to one's 

 hand for food. The chickadee is one of the most confiding. 



For many of our birds, and particularly the winter 

 birds, venture far into the heart of great cities, wherever 

 they find trees and the possibility of eking out a living 

 through the barren months. When they find a place 

 where food is plentiful, they remain in the vicinity until 

 the supply is exhausted, and if the supply never becomes 



exhausted, and if other 

 conditions are satisfactory, 

 some species such as the 

 woodpeckers, nuthatches, 

 and chickadees will remain 

 to nest and bring their 

 young to the source of 

 supply. 



Let us see, then, what it 

 is necessary for us to do 

 in order to attract to our 

 homes a merry troupe of 

 winter visitors, bring them 

 to our window sills, tame 

 them so that they will feed 

 from our hands, and keep 

 them about us all through 

 the lifeless months. 



WHAT FOOD TO USE 



The winter birds that 

 may be expected to come 

 to a feeding shelf are of 

 two kinds, seed-eaters and 

 insect-eaters. Among the 

 seed-eaters in northern 

 United States are the j un- 

 co, the redpoll, the pine 

 siskin, the crossbills, the 

 grosbeaks, the song and 

 tree sparrows and the blue 

 jay. In southern U. S. one could also expect the white- 

 throated and white-crowned sparrows, the blackbirds, 

 and the cardinal, and in the western states other species 

 of finches and buntings. For seed-eating birds, good 

 foods to use are millet, hemp, buckwheat and cracked 

 grain of any sort, or better still, mixed chicken feed such 

 as is sold for young chicks, sweepings from a neighbor- 

 ing mill, or hayseed from the barn floor. 



The insect-eaters are the woodpeckers (the downy 

 and hairy woodpeckers very widely distributed, the 

 flicker, red-bellied and red-headed more common south- 

 ward), the nuthatches, the chickadees, and the brown 



