BIRDS AND FOOD.
My experience in feeding birds this year is that no food is quite so popular as cheese. The circular rind of a small local cheese, whose walls are strengthened with a sort of canvas, caused a hot competition between tits and robins. The robin perched on the edge and hammered away at the rind in a manner that you might mistake for a very tit's. Coconut and meat were both deserted for it. Birds are born mimics. Certainly the robin watches the tits, and tries to imitate their gymnastics. Every other dweller in London must have noticed the almost ludicrous attempts of rooks, crows and starlings to pick food off the surface of the stream in the same manner as the black-headed gulls. Jackdaws, which have some claim to be the cleverest of birds, imitate the herring gulls in like manner. They even follow the plough with them, * * * *
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