Fat or Caterpillar An experience- of this week suggests that
we make a grave mistake when we feed our tits with fat or coconut at this time of year. A very acute observer has in her garden a nesting-box full of very greedy youngsters. The hen bird with untiring energy brings them a soft and palatable cater- pillar every few, minutes. The cock bird takes quite his full share in the work of feeding, but he finds it easier to fly to a lump of fat (placed in an else empty cocoanut shell) than to hunt for caterpillars. He takes the fat to the young ; but so far as it is safe to infer from their behaviour the hen bird objects. She appears to upbraid, if not to swear at, the cock, as if she knew that the diet was not the best for her growing family. Probably it is not. In any case the birds play such a useful part in securing their own natural food that it is a mistake of policy to divert them towards our artificial supplies. Many people hold that a very large amount of coconut is bad for the grown birds. It is as least as likely that promiscuous fat is bad for babies.
• W. BEAcu TuomAs.
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