Making Bird Friends 



BY LAURENCE J. WEBSTER. Holderness, N. H. 



With photographs from nature by the author 



HAVING become much interested in the feathered residents of our 

 farm, my wife and I determined to add to their winter rations, and 

 early in the season estabHshed a feeding place for them. We 

 selected a protected location at the edge of a pine wood, where we fastened 

 pieces of suet to numerous trees, and in a large box, placed on its side on 

 the ground, we put straw, hay siftings and several kinds of seed. It was 

 not long before the Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches discovered 

 the food and began to come regularly. Blue Jays and squirrels also 

 found it and we were obliged to tack fine poultry wire over the suet 

 to prevent them from taking whole pieces as fast as we put them up. 

 Later we had Juncos, Tree Sparrows, White -breasted Nuthatches and 

 Downy Woodpeckers. 



After about a month the Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches 

 became so accustomed to us that we could approach within a few feet of 

 them without their exhibiting any fear. It then occurred to us that we 

 might tame them so that they would eat from our hands. As a beginning, 

 we fastened a small box -cover to a limb of one of the trees where suet was 

 kept, and filled it with chopped nuts. In a day or two the inquisitive 

 Chickadees mustered sufficient courage to investigate this, and found the 

 nuts much to their liking. The Nuthatches, however, did not seem to 

 care for them and seldom visited the box. After the Chickadees had 

 become well accustomed to going to the box, we succeeded, by very gradual 

 stages, in getting them to light on it while held in the hand. Finally we 

 discarded the box and held the chopped nuts in our hands, and they soon 

 came to alight on our fingers as readily as on the box. 



During all this time the Red-breasted Nuthatches were very much in 

 evidence, but we did not succeed in getting them interested in the chopped 

 nuts and therefore tried them with whole beechnuts. At first we wedged 

 them into the crevices in the bark near the suet, so that they might become 

 accustomed to finding nuts at that particular place. They found them 

 very promptly, and those they could not eat at the time they would carry 

 ofif and hide. We then tried holding two or three beechnuts in the 

 hand directly under the place where they had been used to finding them, 

 and, after patient waiting, we were rewarded by having a Nuthatch come to 

 the spot. He investigated the new conditions thoroughly, then reached 

 down and took a nut, which he immediately flew ofi with, but after a 

 short time returned for another. This time the hand was held further 

 from the tree, and he was obliged to put one foot on it in order to reach 

 the nut. Then it was held five or six inches off, but he was equal to 



