294 FIELD ZOOLOGY. 



visits should be encouraged as much as possible. To en- 

 courage a bird means to let it carefully alone, and see that 

 other people treat it in the same way. In unusually 

 severe weather, when snow covers the natural food supply 

 of birds, encouragement may mean providing the little 

 workers with artificial food to tide them over until their 

 natural food again offers. For flesh- and insect-eaters, 

 this might be accomplished by hanging meaty bones in 

 trees, as suggested by the National Humane Society. 

 Fastening netting about the meat might slow up the 

 carrying away of the meat by the larger birds and give 

 the little ones a better chance. 



Nuthatches and brown creepers perform a service 

 difficult for man to do for himself. The eggs of many of 

 our insects are so small as to escape the closest search on 

 our part; but these tiny birds, chickadees, nuthatches, 

 and brown creepers, are well able to search them out; 

 and in the long cold winters require large quantities of 

 them to keep themselves going. If you see a grayish 

 shadow of a little bird, hustling up and down the tree 

 trunks, giving vent to a shrill, jerky note as it glides in 

 and out of the bark crevices, do not throw a stone at it. 

 Ten chances to one, it is one of these little birds getting its 

 hard-earned dinner, and thus ridding us of numerous pests. 



Downy Woodpeckers. — ^Feed their young on wood- 

 boring insects and their adult forms, also on plant lice, 

 scale and bark lice. In winter, the adults search tree 

 trunks for hibernating insects, borers, and insect eggs. 



Hairy Woodpeckers. — Seek more boring beetles and 

 fewer ants than does the downy; otherwise the same as the 

 downy. 



Flicker. — Two stomachs examined contained three 

 thousand ants apiece. Some of the ants were the wood- 



