The Blackbird

Source: What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games And Pastimes
Category: PETS



The blackbird is delicate when caged and must have plenty of
nutritious food, bread and milk, boiled vegetables, ripe fruit,
insects, and snails. He is a thirsty bird and needs plenty of water.

Birds of all kinds especially like cocoanut (though they will come to
the window-sill simply for bread crumbs). The cocoanut should be sawn
in two, and a hole bored through each half, about an inch from the
edge. A strong string is then threaded in and they are hung from the
bough of a tree. They should be hung rather high up, on a bough
reaching as far out from the trunk as possible, so as to avoid all
risk from the cat. The birds frequent elm-trees more than any others,
because the rough bark contains many insects, but you may choose any
kind of tree, as close to your windows as you like. The birds will
keep pecking at the cocoanut all day long and will soon want a new
one. If you have no tree near the house you might fasten a cord across
the outer frame of your window and tie the pieces of nut to that. The
birds would soon find out the cocoa-nut and come to it, and bread
crumbs could also be put on the window-sill to attract them. Or, if
you have a veranda, they could be hung up there, if you could make
them safe from the cat. Mrs. Earle, in her book More Pot-Pourri from
a Surrey Garden, gives elaborate directions for an arrangement in a
veranda or balcony of cocoanuts, etc., for the birds. Lumps of fat
will do as well as cocoanut. Some birds also greatly love a bone to
pick at--an uncooked one with plenty of fat on it, which the butcher
will probably be glad to give you if you ask him and explain its
purpose. It can be hung up in a tree or merely laid on the
window-sill.

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