Attracting The Winter Birds

Best Foods. - A study of these various observations indicates that the following are the best foods to use : suet, nuts, sunflower-seeds, cracked corn, doughnut-crumbs, bread-crumbs, hemp, dog-biscuit, squash-seeds, hay-seed, Japanese millet, bayberry. The fat trimmings from beefsteak may be eaten if hung up in trees. Bones as they are trimmed out, with a few shreds of meat and fat attached, may serve as a substitute for suet, especially if they are cut or broken open so as to expose the marrow.

Other foods which have been reported as being eaten are: raw pork-rinds, meat-scraps, which had better be run through a meat-chopper, chaff from barn-floor or hay-loft, oats, bird-seed, buckwheat, boiled potatoes, and rice.

A piece of carrion hung up in the orchard or edge of the woods may serve as food for the crows and jays. The jays are also fond of chestnuts and corn. When the ground is deeply covered with snow, the grain-eating birds may have difficulty in securing grit which is needed in the giz7xird for grinding the food. To supply this need, coal-ashes or sand may be put out.

Time to begin. - It is important that the food should be put out early, even by the latter part of October, before the supply of natural food becomes scarce, as the early supply may induce some birds to remain, which might otherwise pass on.

The food should also be supplied with regularity, particularly so during stormy or severe weather, so that the birds may be able to find a supply at all times. Care should be taken, in the use of such foods as decay or sour easily, to see that the spoiled food is removed and a fresh supply provided; at times it may be well to supply water.

Species of Birds feeding. - From the records which have been available to the author, the following table has been compiled showing the kinds of birds which have eaten the food placed on or near buildings, the number of times recorded, and the kinds of food eaten by the species.

The table includes the reports of forty-five observers, representing fourteen states, chiefly in the northeastern section of the country. The birds are arranged in the order of the frequency with which they have been reported. Of the forty-three species here included, eighteen have become sufficiently tame to feed from a window and eight fed from the hand.

In the following table is briefly summarized the number of species which have been reported as feeding upon various kinds of foods. From this it will be observed that the four staple articles of food are suet and fat, nuts, crumbs, and various kinds of seeds.