16 FEBRUARY 1940, Page 15

Strange Guests

Bird tables (which even official economists bid us to furnish as in peace-time) have attracted guests of a new sort. In the suburbs of one village-town in Hertfordshire a hare, a stoat, a weasel, and a grey squirrel were seen at different times in the immediate neighbourhood of the table. Roving cats and dogs can scarcely be kept away. The small birds at another table were much annoyed with a moorhen which settled itself in the waterbowl, and completely filled it. One of the less usual visitors to a North Devon bird table has been a raven, doubtless one of those that built in a grove just opposite the house. In a second grove trays are set out for the squirrels, and happily the English red squirrel flourishes there greatly