78 Problems of Bird Life [THIRD WEEK 



they feed, sometimes become confused and drown before 

 they find their way out. They have been seen frozen into 

 the ice by hundreds, sitting there helplessly, and fortunate 

 if the sun, with its thawing power, releases them before 

 they are discovered by marauding hawks or foxes. 



In connection with their food supply the greatest enemy 

 of birds is ice, and when a winter rain ends with a cold 

 snap, and every twig and seed is encased in a transparent 

 armour of ice, then starvation stalks close to all the feath- 

 ered kindred. Then is the time to scatter crumbs and 

 grain broadcast, to nail bones and suet to the tree-trunks 

 and so awaken hope and life in the shivering little forms. 

 If a bird has food in abundance, it little fears the cold. 

 I have kept parrakeets out through all the blizzards and 

 storms of a severe winter, seeing them play and frolic in 

 the snow as if their natural home were an arctic tundra, 

 instead of a tropical forest. 



A friend of birds once planted many sprouts of wild 

 honeysuckle about his porch, and the following summer 

 two pairs of hummingbirds built their nests in near-by 

 apple trees; he transplanted quantities of living woodbine 

 to the garden fences, and when the robins returned in the 

 spring, after having remained late the previous autumn 

 feeding on the succulent bunches of berries, no fewer than 

 ten pairs nested on and about the porch and yard. 



So my text of this, as of many other weeks is, study 

 the food habits of the birds and stock your waste places 

 with their favourite berry or vine. Your labour will be 

 repaid a hundred-fold in song and in the society of the 

 little winged comrades. 



