What Birds Like
To those who are interested in birds, anything almost about birds is interesting, their taste in food as well as their songs, flights, nests and instincts. Therefore, the research work lately undertaken at a new bird farm (with which the I.C.I. has sonic concern) will interest a much larger circle than the game preserves. One aim has been to discover what is the favourite food of birds in the hungry months. The table of the birds kept in the spacious aviary is spread with a number of dainties and the birds almost at once, even before they taste, declare their preferences and prejudices. Of the great collection of grains put out on separate dishes the smaller birds, including thrushes, blackbirds and starlings, much prefer crushed oats. Is the reason the superiority, as is commonly alleged, of the oat grain in fat ? Most birds have a longing for fat, and this accounts in part for the vast numbers of birds seen in autumn and winter at the sewage farms, where, as a rule, a deposit of fat is left on the clinker and is greedily devoured, especially by starlings.
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