It is astonishing how quick most animals are to discover
any food that has exceptional savour and flavour. The rats will discover your Cox's Orange Pippins ; and the tits at once desert an old ham-bone for the skeleton of a pheasant ! One keeper of a garden sanctuary assures me that there is no food nearly so attractive—to all sorts of birds—as pie-crust ; and I can corroborate. One reason is that it is soft enough for the tenderer bills. Some birds, notably the dunnock and wren, must have their food either very soft or very finely minced. Very fine seeds are almost essential for linnets and the smaller finches. It would pay gardeners to preserve bunches of the seed heads of some of their garden annuals ; and if any are to be grown with an eye on the birds the best of all is the cornflower, for which goldfinches have a passion. Apropos of wild birds' food—a woodpigeon, shot the other day in the Home Counties, had nearly a score of acorns in its crop and a pheasant a n umber of buttercup bulbs.
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