Palisadian. [volume] (Cliffside Park, N.J.) 1906-current, 1916-01-01
What The Birds
Do In Winter
From the New Jersey Audubon So
ciety, Demarest, N. j., December
81, 1915.

How many people have ever seri-
ously considered how the hardy little
birds that brave our northern winters
spend the time during periods of
severe weather, how they find shelter
and food?
In sections of New Jersey where
the bay berry bushes grow in pro-
fusion, the myrtle warbler remains
throughout the winter, the sole rep
resentative of this insect eating
group. He supplements the rather
meagre supply of insect food then
to be found with the bay berries,
which contain some of the essential
food properties of fatty meat.
Chickadees and titmice find a con-
siderable part of their winter bill of
fare in the eggs of tent caterpillar
moth and plant lice, which, in winter
remain fastened on the twigs and
concealed in the crevices of the bark
of trees. Brown creepers, likewise,
systematically search the bark of
trees from ground to top for the
pupae and eggs of insects. The
downy and hairy woodpeckers and
pupae in their winter fare. Purple
finches, goldfnches, white-throated
and tree sparrows and other men,
bers of the finch family devour i'm
mense quantities of weed seed, as
we'll as some insect food. Bluebirds
often linger in the north in winter
and the various wild berries suple
ment such insect food as they are
able to discover.
When the recent severe snow storm
came on it completely covered the
bay berry supply. At the food and
shelter station maintained by the
secretary of the New Jersey Audubon
Society, the myrtle warblers found
a supply of bay berry branches with
the berries on, under the shelter of
a porch, and so eager were they for
the berries that the close proximity
of humans did not in the least deter
them from greedily helping them
selves.
Nuthatches, downy woodpeckers,
chickadees, juncos, song, white
throated and tree sparrows, purple
fnches and blue jays focked to the
wire suet holders and the food count
ers, with wonderful appetites for
the suet, mixed bird seed, chick food,
meat scrap and sunfower seed that
was offered for their entertainment.
They were not like Migrants who
are unwilling to work for their din
ner. After each brief lunch, they
secured the nearby trees and sur
rounding country for their natural
insect and weed seed food.
Into the nest boxes about the place,
went some of these birds for nightly
shelter, others sought the thickest
spots in the foliage of pine and
spruce, or the protecting cover of
brush piles left for their convenience.
Once seven bluebirds were noticed at
dusk entering bird box where a
family had been reared the previous
summer. Perhaps this was the same
family, parents and young.
What has been done so success
scattered food and shelter stations,
could, in the belief of the New Jersey
Audubon Society, be multiplied many
fold, to the very great benefit of man
kind, if the people of the State would
all do a little this work. The secre-
tary at Demarest still has a few
pamphlets on winter feeding of birds,
and while these last, will be glad to
send them to applicants. Send for
one, reader, and help your neighbors,
human as well as bird.