ATTRACTING THE WINTER BIRDS 93 



hinged on with leather and fastened down with 

 a leather strip in which a slit is cut fitting over a 

 small staple driven in the box. The lid is sawed 

 out, leaving about three quarters of an inch around 

 its outside edge. Into this edge all around, about 

 a half -inch apart, are driven brads an inch long. 

 On these brads from side to opposite side, first 

 across the length and then across the width, cord 



o * 



is stretched. The common cord of the grocer will 

 do, but stronger will last longer. The birds sit 

 anywhere on the box and eat through the inter- 

 stices made by the cross-cords. A new bird is 

 a little shy in its first visits, but after that shows 

 no hesitancy in eating all it wants. The box is 

 nailed to a six-inch-wide board, and that to a stout 

 strip spiked to the trunk of a tree, near a limb, 

 so that the birds may have a place to wait while 

 another visitor is satisfying its hunger. 



" I leave suet in the box all the summer. The 

 Baltimore oriole likes it greatly and likes to swing 

 on a bit if it gets loose on a string. The birds 

 come to eat it while nesting, even the robin, 

 and sometimes bring their young to feed them on 

 it, stuffing a morsel down the throat of their fluffy 

 offspring." 



Moving Shelf. On the whole the most satis- 

 factory plan which the author has tried is a shelf 



