312
Concord, Mass.
1898.
Dec. 8-10
(No 2)
a little beyond the edges of the tightly closed bill. It
is a mystery how the bird could have met its fate.
  Miss Keyes is feeding the birds this winter as usual
and she had a fine lot of them to show me. There
were the Nuthatches (Carolinensis) four Downy Woodpeckers,
six Chickadees and a Woodpecker fed exclusively on
suet, a large piece of which is kept hanging in the
mountain ash in front of the drawing room window.
The Woodpeckers helped themselves first and until they
had satisfied their appetites the smaller birds had
to wait. In no instance did I see more than one bird
of any kind on the suet at one time even the social
& amiable little Chickadees taking their breakfast by turns,
The Sparrows ate bread and suet indiscriminately but the
Jays, strange to say, rarely touched anything but the
bread and this, Miss Keyes tells me, has been the case
ever since she first attracted them to the house three
or four years ago. I watched them for an hour or
more both mornings and only ever saw one of them
attack the suet but he helped himself liberally.
[margin]Blue Jays
prefer bread
to suet[/margin]
  On each morning four Jays came soon after
sunrise and remained an hour or more. During this time
on each occasion they made away with nearly half a loaf of bread. This
had been broken up rather finely and thrown out on the
snow under the window. The Jays ate a little of it and
carried it off the rest filling their throats and bills just
as the Canada Jays do and taking their loads into
[margin]Jays cacheing 
bread[/margin]