Bird-Life of a Swiss City 



By REV WENDELL PRIME 



AS Bird- Lore's work relates to the protection, as well as the study of 

 ^ birds, 1 am encouraged to send you a few lines in regard to the 

 way in which the birds fare in Zurich, the largest, and in some 

 respects the most important, city in Switzerland. Since the first of the 

 year I have occupied a room on the first floor of a house in one of 

 the most frequented residence quarters of the city. Observing the pro- 

 vision made for the birds by many of my neighbors, I fastened to the 

 railing of the veranda, upon which a glass door opens, a small, open 

 bird-house. In this I placed a dish with bread-crumbs and another with 

 water. I also fastened to one of the veranda posts a "food -giver," 

 which is a stick about one foot long from which are suspended, by short 

 cords, a wooden cup containing bird-seed, a net-work box containing 

 walnut-kernels, and the half-shell of a walnut containing suet. Im- 

 mediately my restaurant attracted numerous customers, especially Spar- 

 rows, which are not so pugnacious as their American relatives. They 

 did not prevent numbers of Chaffinches or Beechfinks {Frin^'tlla cwlebs) 

 from having their daily share of the spoils. These beautiful birds, by 

 their color and song, are a continual joy in the streets and parks 

 and gardens. But the most important visitor at the bird -house, from 

 the very beginning of the year, was the Blackbird or Amsel {Turdus 

 merula) , a black Thrush, about the size of our Robin and a much finer 

 singer. His presence was respected by the smaller birds, but he was not 

 intolerant. Though he occupied pretty much all the best part of the 

 little house, the others were able to feed at the sides and corners. At 

 the ''food-giver," only a few feet distant, I had a totally different 

 company. For many weeks it was patronized exclusively by the Meiser, 

 the relatives of our Chickadees and Tits, of which half a dozen species 

 are common in middle Europe. My visitors were the Kohlmeiser {Parus 

 major), about the size of our Chickadees, but with much beauty of 

 varied color. Alighting on the edge of the seed-cup. they clean it out 

 to the very bottom. Alighting on the stick, with two or three twitches 

 of the beak they pull up the net-work bag and, holding it with the 

 feet on the stick, they hammer like Woodpeckers at the walnut-kernels. 

 In the same way they reach the suspended shell with suet, but they use 

 this only occasionally. In the latter part of March, the "food -giver" 

 became the resort of another visitor, the Griinfink {Frin^illa chloris) . 

 They had no difficulty in managing the seed -cup or the walnut-bag. 

 Sometimes two pairs would be at work at the "food -giver" at the 

 same time. They are the only birds, except Meiser, which have 

 made any attempt to use it. All these five kinds of birds continued 



(19O 



