The Winter Feeding of Birds 



229 



to a poor feeble man, who straight- 

 way aslced for the meal tickets to 

 accompan}' it. 



One of two things must be clone 

 at the beginning — either a feeding 

 place must be made close to suitable 

 shelters, or, lacking this, the shelters 

 themselves should be provided; and, 

 to create a successful system of feed- 

 ing, at once complete and effective, 

 an organization should be formed in 

 every village, either in connection 

 with the local branch of the Audubon 

 Society or other nature club, or as an 

 independent Society for the Winter 

 Protection of Birds. 



The work of this body should be 

 under three separate heads — Home, 

 School and Field, and, from its neces- 

 sities and diversity, people of all ages 

 and both sexes may be utilized. 



The Home branch, of course, is 

 the simpler — the feeding about houses 

 and barns ; but no little study and skill 

 are required to note the needs of the 



AN APPLE-TREE RESTAURANT 

 Photozraphed by M. O. W. at Fairfield, Conn. 



different birds and place the food where they will 

 take it naturally, and yet be out of the reach of 

 marauding cats. For during the past dozen 

 winters I have seen many little whims displayed 

 by birds feeding in and about my apple trees, and 

 though all the sparrow tribe feed naturally on the 

 ground, the tree-feeding birds, like Nuthatches, 

 Chickadees, Woodpeckers, Cross-bills, etc., relish 

 their food better and are fully at ease only when 

 they find it placed in a situation like to that of the 

 grubs and insects they pick from twig and bark. 



To study and adapt the location to the in- 

 dividual is, therefore, one duty of the Home 

 branch, to outwit the English Sparrow is another, 

 and I assure any one who has not tried that it is 

 a process as full of mental discipline as an entire 

 ^.^K'1^9'^'''°'^''^L SECTION OF course of mathematics. I have waged a rather 



THE SELF- FEEDING FEEDER ^ 



From Beriepschs Der Gesamte successful Warfare on this Spatrow, and the few 



V^ogelschutz ' 



