20 



the boards in order to get all of it at once, thus ruining the 

 hopper. A good device to prevent squirrels from climbing to 

 the food house would be an iron rod as a support for the house, 

 6 feet in height. Now and then some agile squirrel will sur- 

 mount almost any contrivance that may be invented to block 

 its passage. Then there is nothing to be done but to trap or 

 shoot the squirrel, or to surround the supporting post with 

 several rows of large fish-hooks, closely set, nailed, stapled or 

 wired on with the points downward. This is said to be effective 

 but may not be so in all cases. 



Those who do not care to feed English sparrows or: squirrels 

 may try any of the" following devices: two pieces of suet may 

 be tied up with twine and connected by a piece of string about 

 a foot long. This may be thrown over a limb or 

 a wire, as boys throw horse-chestnuts, and if 

 thrown with sufficient force the string will wind 

 about its support, leaving the balls of suet 

 hanging. Native birds will readily cling on and 

 feed, but the sparrows 

 find it difficult. This 

 method is used success- 

 fullv bv Miss Cordelia 

 Stanwood of Ellsworth, 

 Maine. Miss Agnes M. Learned lashes suet to light sticks and 

 suspends them by string, puts food in small suspended baskets 

 that sway in the wind, and stuffs suet into cracks in the bark on 

 the under side of willow limbs. Another successful plan is the 

 use of the so-called food stick. (See Fig. 23.) Suet or tallow is 

 melted, mixed with bird seed, and poured into inch auger holes 

 made in a stick or section of a branch. When the contents of 

 the holes have been hardened by the frost the stick is nailed or 

 tied under the branch of a tree, with the filled holes upside down. 

 Dr. E. W. Victor publishes a cut of a food stick used in Prospect 

 Park. Brooklyn, New York.^ This stick is grooved deeply along 

 its length, the grooves filled with fat and seeds, the stick bound 

 around with a netting of half-inch mesh, and then wired paral- 

 lel to a slender upright limb, or underneath a horizontal one. 

 English sparrows and squirrels cannot feed readily from these 



Fig. 22. — Suet 

 hung by string. 



Fig. 23. — Food stick showing 

 holes for seeds and fat. 



1 The Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, July, 1916, p. 105. 



