supply is likely to be most meagre and to be cut off by heavy snow placed with the open side against a tree. It is held by two little 
and sleet storms, but some of our feathered friends are not staples below, acting as hinges, and one above, which, being 
averse to varying their regular bill of fare by a bite from our 
“free lunch counters,” even in 
summer. Some people have con¬ 
tended that birds thus fed in 
summer would grow lazy and 
allow the insect armies to wax 
strong; therefore, that they 
should be fed only in winter to 
tide them over the season of 
storm and possible famine. This 
apprehension is not sustained by 
the experience of the writer. 
The birds that sample the spread 
on the lunch counter may visit 
it daily, or may not come to it 
for much longer periods, but in 
either case the bulk of their 
food is their favorite insect or 
weed-seed diet, and it is evident 
that trees and foliage profit by 
the results in bird abundance 
and activity which the lunch 
counter serves to stimulate. 
The first simple methods of 
feeding have usually consisted 
in scattering crumbs and seed on porches or in sheltered spots and 
tying pieces of suet to branches or nailing them on the trunks of 
trees. The crumbs may attract the slate-colored junco or black 
snowbird, tree sparrows and chickadees, and even the blue jay 
has been known to come after some of the larger bits. Wood¬ 
peckers, nuthatches, chickadees and creepers appreciate the suet. 
A lunch counter is provided by a board 
with slightly raised edge strips, nailed up 
in a tree and provided with a seed bin and 
with crumbs scattered on it. The same 
sort of a counter may be fastened to a 
window sill—preferably an upper window. 
The writer improved on the plan of tack¬ 
ing suet on the trees. The latter arrange¬ 
ment permits the blue jays to steal large 
pieces. A piece of quarter-inch mesh 
wire screen is bent into basket shape and 
withdrawn, permits the filling of the basket with suet. 
Baron von Berlepsch elab¬ 
orated a number of plans for 
providing food for the birds, in¬ 
cluding apparatus for melting 
suet and mixing it with seeds, 
ground meat, dried berries and 
ants’ eggs. The mixture is 
poured over the foliage of con¬ 
iferous trees, where, hardening 
and adhering, it remains a rich 
harvest for the birds. 
The writer has for some years 
maintained a lunch counter or 
food shelf outside his bedroom 
window. This is equipped with 
a food bin or hopper and an up¬ 
right piece of tree branch in 
which auger holes are filled with 
broken bits of nuts, over which 
melted suet is allowed to harden-. 
The hopper is made after the 
fashion of poultry food hoppers, 
an upright supply bin, wide at 
the top, where it is protected 
with a sloping, hinged cover, narrow at the bottom where it feeds 
into a trough as the birds take the food. This food consists of 
meat scraps and dried bread ground together in such proportion 
as not to be sticky, to which ordinary mixed canary seed is 
added. 
Later, sunflower seed was scattered on the shelf, in the hope 
of attracting neighboring goldfinches. 
This effort has never proved successful, 
but it did bring the purple finches in num¬ 
bers, and they maintained a monopoly on 
the shelf most of the time while feeding. 
White-breasted and red-breasted nut¬ 
hatches and chickadees came first for the 
nuts and suet, and then developed a great 
fondness for the sunflower seed. Myrtle 
warblers had been feeding from the suet 
(Continued on page 388) 
If you give him a chance, the red screech owl will become quite companionable. 
Mice are his favorite diet 
The young blue jay should be fed on bread and milk, 
hard-boiled eggs and chopped meat, or with any 
insects available 
A suet box of wire forms a luncheon counter de luxe. 
It can be nailed against trees or under a protecting 
cornice 
Taken young enough, the barred owl can be made 
into a very friendly pet. The blue jay's diet will 
suit him capitally 
373 
