GREAT TIT. 
% FEEDING THE 
BIRDS 
IN WINTER. 
Written and Illustrated 
with Photographs by 
H@rMann Lema. 
“Some haunt the rushy moor, the 
lonely woods ; 
Some bathe their silver plumage 
in the floods; 
Some fly to man, his household 
gods implore, 
And gather round his hospitable 
door ; 
Wait the known call, and find pro- 
tection there 
From all the lesser tyrants of the 
air.” 
GREAT TIT. 
T is with those birds last described by the poet that we have to do, and I want 
to try to induce all my readers to remember them and give them welcome in 
the hard winter weather. 
They will be very grateful 
for your trouble, and if you 
have a little patience they will get very tame, come when called or whistled or 
summoned by a_ bell, 
and in the spring they will 
pay for thei winter food by 
singing you songs and doing some real hard work amongst the slugs and other uninvited 
insects. 
when rain or snow keeps 
one indoors. 
Moreover, they are imteresting and amusing to watch on the long dark days 
Then again, it is an education for the children ; 
for not only will they learn the names and habits of the different birds, they will 
also learn the lesson of kindness—a lesson which they will apply in after years to 
others besides birds. But we 
cruel kindness to feed and attract 
them to them deaths. Cats are 
and if cats also frequent our 
food out of reach of a cat’s 
I have tried is a shallow box 
high, and placed not too close to 
might use as a stepping-stone. 
food, this will depend to a great 
which come to seek it, though 
other wild creatures, when hard 
to food that is not natural to 
keenly in the hard weather are 
such as blackbirds and thrushes ; 
them dropping dead in numbers 
will eat a certain amount of 
are natural to them, and we must 
to their tastes. Cocoa-nuts are 
substitutes, and very few of our 
cut each nut in half, and either 
them upside down by a string 
GREAT TIT. 
178 
must act with due care; it is 
starving birds if we thus lure 
their worst and natural enemies, 
garden we must place the birds’ 
spring. The best arrangement 
fixed on a pole about six feet 
a tree or wall which the cat 
As regards the best sorts of 
extent on the species of birds 
it is wonderful how birds and 
pressed, will adapt themselves 
them. Those which suffer most 
the soft-billed insect-eating birds, 
and in severe winters I have seen 
from the frozen hedges. They 
bread, and even corn, but neither 
try to supply food better suited 
one of the very best all-round 
pensioners will refuse them. I 
stand them in the box or hang 
from some convenient branch; 
neha wel eee 
