Photograph by Evnest Harold Dayr 



A BI.UEJAY FEEDING ON SUET 



"Perhaps the simplest scheme of feeding, the least troublesome, and the most attractive to 

 numbers of birds, is the tying of a piece of suet to a convenient limb, or perhaps to the 

 balustrade of one's piazza, preferably in a protected spot and one that can at the same time 

 be easily watched from some window" (see page 170). 



about the flower garden or in lines among 

 the rows of vegetables: wild sarsaparilla 

 and pokeberry along the boundary walls ; 

 while if you have a corner somewhere in 

 the fields that can be planted with buck- 

 wheat and Japanese millet, it will prove 

 a great attraction, particularly in winter. 



FOOD-HOUSES AND SHELTERS 



111 bad weather, however, particularly 

 in the North, where we are so apt to be 

 co\ered up with snow, more artificial 

 means of feeding should be resorted to, 

 and food stations, food-houses, and food 

 shelters of various sorts should be estab- 

 lished ill proper places. If quail or grouse 

 are to lie fed, inconspicuous bough shel- 

 ters may be built in protected places 

 among the fields or woods most fre- 

 quented by them, while about the house 

 or among the neighboring plantations all 

 sorts of devices may be resorted to. 



A European bird lover has invented a 

 food-house, an adaptation of which, called 

 the Audubon food-house, has been much 

 used on this side of the water, and is most 

 satisfactor)' (see page 165). It consists 

 of a square hip roof, with vertical glass 

 sides suspended beneath and open at the 



liottom, the whole sujiported on a central 

 rustic cedar post, encircled with food 

 trays beneath the roof. The glass sides 

 protect the food trays from the weather 

 and at the same time admit light and al- 

 low of eas}' observation. These, when 

 placed among the shrubbery about one's 

 house, prove most attractive. 



The same bird lover has in\'ented also 

 a food bell that supplies grain, etc., auto- 

 matically from a receptacle above, and 

 which ma\' be suspended from a tree or 

 piazza roof, or any other convenient 

 place (see page 164). 



A¥indow boxes are a never-ceasing 

 source of enjoyment. ^Ir. Ernest Harold 

 Ilaynes built the first I ever saw at his 

 home in Meriden, X. H., a particularly 

 attractive one, which has helped him to 

 become intimate with an astonishing va- 

 riety of birds (see page 173). 



Food shelves may be put up in all 

 sorts of protected places — about houses, 

 against tree trunks, etc. ; and a food car, 

 a sort of moving free - lunch counter, 

 which may be run conveniently on a wire 

 from window to neighboring tree, is actu- 

 ally manufactured by one enterprising 

 gentleman : and the same man builds also 



169 



