Winter Bird Meal Almost every garden has its highly courageous
or friendly robin, and the pleasure of rewarding its friendliness is a good deal harder to satisfy in war-time. The robin's favourite food is butter. If allowed on to the breakfast table—as in one Essex house—it will attempt first to raid the butter-dish. What is the best alternative to this highly rationed luxury, as is now becomes? In my garden the favourite robin appears at the meal-hour with great punctuality on a garden table placed up against the window and is accorded morsels of the prevailing surplus. The onlookers have been struck by the birds' success in dealing with bones. They are indeed as well appreciated by a number of birds as by a dog, and are much more wholesome food than coconuts. The robin nevertheless, in spite of his success in cleaning a chop-bone, has a tender and slender beak. It has little of the power of a tit's or a starling's ; and by far the best food for the bird, as indeed for many others, is any refuse meat put through a mincing machine. To the tougher bills minced nuts are as grateful as minced meat. Chaffinches, for example, exult in them. Not so the robin or the wren. They need a softer substance, though they will tackle even coconut if needs must. There should be a doubled sale of mincing apparatus in war-time. Through such apparatus almost any form of household waste may be made into a useful form of food for all birds, including of course poultry, which now produce, if not golden eggs, at least eggs worth a piece of silver each.
Previous page
