AT A FOOD-SHELF 
ALBERT P. MORSE 
My dining-room windows look out upon a narrow grassy 
lawn shaded by pear trees, beyond which are patches of 
raspberry and blackberry bushes, an asparagus bed, a grapery, 
and still farther an old apple orchard and an open grassy 
field. Elm, maple, chestnut (in a losing battle with the 
blight) ash, and spruce trees shade the nearby houses and 
the streets, and shelter for birds from wintry winds is pro¬ 
vided by a plenty of evergreens: arbor vitae, hemlock hedges 
and trees, and a dense growth of young, weevil-checked white 
pines. The back garden is weedy in the fall — whose is not 
_and here the migrating sparrows gather and spend several 
days in congenial surroundings. 
In December 1918, at the request of the more stay-at-home 
members of the household, who wished a nearer view of the 
birds, I placed on a level with the window sill a food-shelf 
extemporized from an old box cover about eighteen by twenty- 
four inches in size, with a wind-break and a spruce bough 
at the end. The shelf was stocked with seeds — millet, 
hemp, sunflower; and suet and boiled bones with shreds of 
tissue still adhering were placed in the nearer trees. The 
table was set, the guests invited; would they come? 
We had not long to wait. Wandering Chickadees, White¬ 
breasted Nuthatches and a Downy Woodpecker soon wel¬ 
comed the additional source of supply ard different fare. 
Various members of the sparrow tribe visiting the garden 
weeds added the window-shelf to their ports of call. It seemed 
to be especially attractive to a flock of Juncos varying in 
number from fifteen to fifty, which appeared periodically, 
remaining in the vicinity for several days at a time and made 
daily or semi-daily circuits of the garden, nearby thickets, 
orchards and woodland edges. When snow fell the flock 
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