The best New Year's resolution a lover of nature can make, is a promise to provide the feathered waifs of winter with free lunches. This may be done by fastening pieces of suet to limbs and trunks of trees, and by placing sunflower seeds, bird seeds, or cracked nuts on the veranda roof or on the window-sill of your room, where sharp eyes will soon spy them.

January Second

Your boarders will be the birds that either remain with you throughout the year, or have come from the frozen North to spend the winter. These are the birds that feed upon seeds of various kinds, or the feathered carpenters that pry into the crevices of the bark, and dig into the rotten wood in search of the insects and the insect larvÆ hidden there.

January Third

The chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch, and the downy woodpecker, keep company during the long winter months. They will appreciate your lunches most, and will call on you frequently throughout the day.

Notes

January Fourth

Do not attempt to tame your visitors until they have made several calls for lunches. Then put a crude "dummy," with a false face, near the window, and raise the sash to let the birds enter. Within a few days the chickadees will perch upon Dummy's shoulders and take nut meats from his buttonholes.

January Fifth

Having thus gained the chickadees' confidence, hurry to the window when you hear them call, and quietly take the place of the dummy. Of course they will be suspicious at first, and probably you will meet with many disappointments, but when you have succeeded in taming them to alight upon your hand or shoulder, you will find enjoyment in calling them to you by the gentle whistle to which you should accustom them.

January Sixth

Tempting food, and slow movements when in the presence of birds, are the main secrets to successful bird taming. The chickadee, as you will find, is the easiest of these birds to tame. He has several songs and call notes, so do not expect always to hear him repeat his name, "chick-a-de-de-de-de."

Notes

January Seventh

Persons not familiar with birds often mistake the white-breasted nuthatch for a woodpecker, for their actions are much alike. The nuthatch creeps about the trees in all kinds of attitudes, while the woodpecker assumes an upright position most of the time and moves in spasmodic hops. The young and the female downy woodpecker do not have the red crescent on the back of the head. The hairy woodpecker is another "resident" that looks like his cousin, the downy, but he is once again as large.

January Eighth

Winter in the North is a season of hardship and hunger to wild creatures. The otherwise wary and cunning crow often puts discretion aside when in search of food, and fearlessly visits the village refuse heaps, or the farmer's barn-yard. In the orchards you will find where he has uncovered the decayed apples and pecked holes into them.

January Ninth

Even the mink, after days of fasting, is driven by starvation to leave his retreat in a burrow along a creek or river bank, and to forage upon the farmer's poultry. Poor fellow, he does not hibernate, so he must have food; fish is his choice, but when hard pressed, he will take anything, "fish, flesh, or fowl."

Notes

January Tenth

In the fields and lowlands, the scattered coveys of Bob-whites that have escaped the hunter, huddle for shelter from a storm under a stump or in a hollow log. Sometimes several days pass before they are able to dig through the drifts that imprison them. Should a heavy sleet-storm cover the snowy mantle with a crust too thick and hard for them to break through, starvation is their fate. Sportsmen living within convenient reach of quail coverts should watch over them in such weather and provide food and shelter for the birds.

January Eleventh

Even the flocks of horned (or shore) larks that feed on the wind-swept hilltops, pause occasionally and squat close to the ground to keep from being blown away. They have come from the North, and after passing the winter with us, most of them will return to Canada to nest.

January Twelfth

A long period of cold freezes the marshes to the bottom, and compels the muskrats to seek the bushy banks, or to take shelter under the corn-shacks or hay-stacks in the fields. Poor things, they of all animals endure hardship; for one can often track them to where they have scratched away the snow while searching for grass-blades, roots, acorns or apples that have fallen and decayed.

Notes

January Thirteenth

When the wind sweeps over the fields and the cold nips your ears, you are apt to come suddenly upon a flock of snowflakes, or snow buntings. Hastening back and forth among the weeds along the bank, they reach up and pick the seeds and crack them in their strong bills. They, too, like the horned larks, have come from the North, and in March will return again.

January Fourteenth

You cannot show your friendship for our native birds in any better way than by being an enemy of the English sparrow. He is a quarrelsome little pest and seems to be getting more pugnacious every year. He not only fights the other birds, but he has been seen to throw their eggs to the ground and to tear their nests to pieces. Be careful that he does not steal the lunches that you have provided for other birds.

January Fifteenth

How do the insects pass the winter? Much in the same way that our plants and flowers do. As the cold weather kills or withers the plants, leaving their seeds and roots to send forth shoots next summer, so most of the insects die, leaving their eggs, their larvÆ, and their pupa to be nourished into life by the warm days of spring.

Notes

January Sixteenth

Insects are more dependent on climatic conditions than are birds or mammals. Nevertheless, even on the coldest days of winter, one may tear away the bark of a forest tree and find spiders which show signs of life, and if kept in a warm room for a few hours, they become quite active.

January Seventeenth

The life of an insect which undergoes what is termed a "complete transformation," is divided into four stages: First, the egg; second, the larva; third, the pupa or chrysalis, and fourth, the adult insect or imago. Each of these changes is so complete and different from any of the others, that the insect never appears twice in an easily recognized form.

January Eighteenth

Let us take the common house-fly for an example, and follow it through the changes that it must undergo before becoming adult. The mother fly deposits more than a hundred eggs at a time, in a dump at the back of the stable. The eggs hatch in half a day.

Notes

January Nineteenth

Now we have the larvÆ (maggots), as the second stage is called. These little creatures are white and grow very fast, shedding their skin several times before they take on a different form, which they do at the end of three or four days.

January Twentieth

The third, or pupa, stage is reached when a tiny brown capsule-like formation has taken the place of the maggot. In this stage no movement is apparent, nor is any food taken; there is only a quiet waiting for the final change, which comes in about five days, when, out from one end of a chrysalis, a fully developed fly appears.

January Twenty-first

The wonderful changes just described take place throughout most of the insect world. The larvÆ of butterflies and moths are caterpillars; the larvÆ of June bugs or May beetles are grubs. Some moth and butterfly caterpillars weave silken cocoons about themselves; some make cocoons from leaves or tiny chips of wood; some utilize the hair from their own bodies, while others attach themselves to the under side of boards, stones, and stumps, where, after shedding their skin, they hang like mummies until spring calls them back to life.

Notes

January Twenty-second

Bird lovers often make the mistake of putting out nesting-boxes too late in the season. They forget that most of the birds begin to look for nesting-sites as soon as they arrive in the spring, therefore the boxes should be in place before the prospective tenants appear. March first is none too early for many localities.

January Twenty-third

A natural cavity in a root, cut from a rustic stump, or a short length of hollow limb, with a two-inch augur hole bored near the top, and a piece of board nailed over each end, makes an artistic nesting-place for birds. Some persons prefer a miniature cottage with compartments and doors; though birds will often nest in them, the simpler and more natural the home, the more suited it is to their wants.

January Twenty-fourth

A few minutes' work with hammer, saw, and knife, will convert any small wooden box that is nailed (not glued) together, into a respectable nesting-box. After it has been covered with two coats of dark green paint it is ready to be put in place. A shelf placed in a cornice, under a porch, or the eaves of a building, makes an excellent resting-place for the nest of a robin or a phoebe.

Notes

January Twenty-fifth

Nesting-boxes may be placed almost anywhere that there is shade and shelter. They ought to be put beyond the reach of prowling cats and meddlesome children, at least fifteen feet from the ground, and to reap the benefit of your labor, they should be near your sitting-room window.

January Twenty-sixth

It is better not to put an old nest or any nesting material in the houses. Birds prefer to do their own nest building, and they have their notions about house furnishing, which do not agree with our ideas. Birds have often refused nesting-boxes simply because over-zealous persons had stuffed them with hay or excelsior.

January Twenty-seventh

The birds that nest in bird-houses are the ones which, if unprovided with them, would naturally choose cavities in stumps, tree trunks, hollow limbs and the like. Almost without exception this class of nest-builders will return to the same nest year after year, so once a pair has taken up its abode with you, you may expect to see the birds for several summers.

Notes

January Twenty-eighth

The following are common tenants of bird-houses: Purple martin, bluebird, house wren, chickadee, tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch, and tree or white-breasted swallow. These birds are great insect destroyers, and most of them are sweet songsters, so they should be encouraged to take up their abode about our grounds.

January Twenty-ninth

After a deep fall of snow, the Northern shrike, or butcher-bird, is forced into the villages and towns for his food. Dashing into a flock of English sparrows, he snatches one and carries it back to the country to be eaten at his leisure. He is the bird that impales small birds, mice, and large insects on barbed-wire fences, or thorn bushes, after his stomach has been filled, and hence his name.

January Thirtieth

Next to the beaver, the porcupine is the largest rodent in the United States; the largest porcupines live in Alaska. When on the ground, his short, thick tail drags in the snow, leaving a zigzag trail. When the snow is deep and the weather stormy, he spends much of his time in pine, spruce, and hemlock trees, feeding on the bark and twigs.

Notes

January Thirty-first

Hawks, before eating, tear away the skin and feathers from their prey; but owls eat everything, unless the prey be large, even bolting small birds and mammals entire. In the course of a few hours they disgorge pellets of indigestible portions, the bones being encased in the feathers or hair. The pellets may be found on the snow beneath the owl's roost, and they often contain skulls of mice as white and perfect as though they had been cleaned in a museum.

Notes

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