Feeding Birds In Summer And Winter
by
On wintry mornings, when leaf and twig are decked with hoar-frost and the ground is hard and dry, affording no food for the birds, it is a piteous sight to see them cowering under the evergreens with ruffled feathers, evidently starving and miserable, quietly waiting for the death that must overtake many of them unless we come to their rescue.
It is one of my delights to feed the small “feathered fowls” through all the winter months, and I only wish all my readers could enjoy with me the lovely scenes of happy bird life to be witnessed through the French window opposite my writing-table. These gatherings of birds are the result of many years of persistent kindness and thought for the welfare of my bird pets. Their tameness cannot be attained all at once; it takes time to establish confidence; it needs thought about the kinds of food required by various species of birds, regularity in feeding, and quiet gentleness of manner to avoid frightening any new and timid visitors. Doubtless there are very many lovers of birds who share this pleasure with me, but for those who may not happen to know how to attract the feathered tribes I will go a little into detail.
This being a large garden near game preserves, and surrounded by a wide, furze-covered common, I have been able to attract and tame the ordinary wild pheasants by putting out Indian corn, buckwheat, and raisins, till now they come to the doorstep and look up with their brilliant, red-ringed eyes, and feed calmly whilst I watch them. It is a really beautiful sight to see three or four cock birds, with their golden-bronze plumage glistening like polished metal as the morning sun rests upon them, and as many of their more sober-coloured mates feasting on the dainties they find prepared for them; as a rule, they are very amicable and feed together like barndoor fowls. When satisfied, the brown hens run swiftly away to cover, while the cocks, with greater confidence, walk quietly away in stately fashion, or remain under the trees.
Wood-pigeons are usually very shy and wary birds, yet these also come, six and eight at a time, and feed at my window, Indian corn and peas being their specialities. I have large quantities of beech-nuts and acorns collected every autumn, and thus I can scatter this food also for pigeons and squirrels all through the winter. Jays, jackdaws, rooks, and magpies also approve of acorns and beech-nuts, so it is doing a real kindness to tribes of birds to reserve this food for them until their other stores are exhausted, and we can thus bring them within our view and study their interesting ways, their modes of feeding, and, I fear I must add, their squabbles also, for hungry birds are very pugnacious.
Blackbirds and thrushes are very fond of Sultana raisins; they also like split groats and brown bread crumbs, as also do starlings and, I believe, most of the smaller birds. Fat in any shape or form will attract the various species of titmice to the window. I always keep a small Normandy basket full of suet and ham-fat hanging on a nail at the window. It is a great rendezvous for these charming little pets, and it is also supplied with Barcelona nuts for nuthatches, who fully appreciate them and carry them off to the nearest tree with rugged bark into which they fix the nuts, and then hammer at the shell till they can extract the contents.
In very hard frosts I used always to put out a pan of water, as I feared the birds suffered from thirst and needed this help. One day, however, I was comforted to see some starlings, after a good meal of groats, run off to the grass plot and eagerly peck at the hoar-frost, which, while it exists, thus supplies the lack of water.