The Garden Magazine, October, 1921 



75 



Mattie Ed-jiirds Hewitt, Photo. 



ABUNDANT SHELTER AND FOOD A-PLENTY 



Here are ideal nesting quarters and a varied bill-of-fare. The seclusion of this naturalistic planting has 

 great charm for other visitors besides the birds. Garden of Mrs. Gordon Abbot, Manchester, Mass. 



climbing Bittersweet and Greenbrier near by in the wild Cherry 

 and Mulberry trees. The Mulberry, by the way, caters to the 

 little folk long after its branches are bare; in early spring, spar- 

 rows and juncoes are still scratching in the leaves beneath it for 

 seeds from the fallen fruit. When starlings come to the garden 

 crowding upon each other's toes and always voracious, they 

 must quickly be driven away or, in a little while, we should 

 have nothing left for our native birds. 



Though there is cheer for the birds in every corner of the 

 place, a principal care is to coax them close to the house, so 

 that their voices and the glint and grace of their wings may inti- 

 mately affect the family life, and the birds become members of 

 the family. A clump of shrubbery near by, an undisturbed 

 flower-bed under a window, and persistent berries on house 

 vines of Honeysuckle and Virginia Creeper and hips of the 

 Climbing Rose accomplish it. To these come the winter wren, 

 the purple finch, clinking notes like ice in a glass tumbler, the 

 cedar waxwing, and the belated or early or probably wintering 

 bluebird, as well as others of the birds already mentioned. In 

 an obscure corner, under windowsill and eaves, Honeysuckle 

 grows thickly, offering such night quarters as junco and song 

 sparrow can scarcely decline. Of course they would decline 

 readily enough if it meant sharing with English sparrows. 



Shrubs and small trees with berries "brag for all vegeta- 

 tion" in the face of winter. How the ruddy berries gossip of 



summer! How they glow in the keen air and radiate hospital- 

 ity! If coated with ice, they glow more warmly. And when 

 birds come among them — who misses anything then? The 

 Mountain Ash is always beautiful, and its berries are favorites 

 with so many birds that it pays to net the ripening clusters and 

 to uncover a few at intervals during severe weather. The tall 

 Cranberry Bush merits planting for its own loveliness and for 

 the sake of the cedar waxwings which appear actually to enjoy 

 the extremely acid fruit. The scarlet berries of a single bush will 

 keep a flock of the gypsy-hearted birds from their travels for 

 days, during which time their incessant "ghostly whispers," 

 which have been likened to the piping of a peanut-roaster on a 

 city corner, promote in the hearer a similarly snug forgetfulness 

 of the cold. Excellent, too, are Bayberry, Barberry, the 

 Thorns, the Dogwoods (whose berries are mostly gone by 

 Christmas), Juniper, Sumac, and Black Alder, to name several 

 of the most adaptable and most popular with winter birds in the 

 Middle Atlantic States. 



TALL evergreens are best solitary or set thinly as wind- 

 breaks, for numbers together shelter such enemies of bird- 

 life as hawks, bluejays, and red squirrels, but an evergreen hedge 

 surrounds the vegetable garden, and juncoes and sparrows 

 roost here in hundreds, redeeming the bleakest twilights with 

 their bustle and bright voices. There are clumps of shrubbery 



