The little birds who stay with us are only those who can eat seeds, as I said, or the eggs and insects to be found in the crevices of the bark on trees. These birds do a great deal of good, for each one destroys thousands of insects before they have come out of the egg. One small chickadee will eat several hundred insect eggs in a day. These little fellows can almost always find their food, for the snow seldom covers the trunks of the trees; but now and then in the winter we have an ice storm; then the trunks and branches are buried under ice, so that the birds suffer, and perhaps will starve to death. In such a time it will be kind of you who live in the country to put out food for them. You can give them any table scraps of meat or vegetables, or bread, chopped fine for their tiny mouths, with corn or grain for bigger birds. What they all like best to eat is suet,--which the butcher will give you,--chopped fine, or, better still, nailed or tied to a branch or a fence, so that they can pick off morsels for themselves. This will make them all very happy; but you must see that the English sparrow does not drive them away, or eat it all himself. Some persons who live in the country or small towns spread a table every day through the winter for the birds. Many come for food, and they have great pleasure in watching them and studying their ways. One lady I know who is an invalid, and her greatest happiness in the long cold months, when she cannot go out, is to set her breakfast-table, and watch the guests who come to it. She lives in the southern part of Ohio, and she has all winter cardinal grosbeaks, or redbirds as she calls them, blue jays, tufted titmice, and others. The cardinals are fine singers, and they sing to her every month in the year. XVII HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS MANY people think that as soon as the young birds of a nest are full grown, and know how to take care of themselves, the family separate, and have no more to do with each other. Some have even said that the old birds push the little ones out of the nest to get rid of them. All this is a great mistake, and any one who has watched them carefully will say so. In many cases, when the brood is grown and all have left the nest, the whole family keep together. One who has eyes sharp to see will find everywhere little groups of parents with their young. If the old birds rear more than one brood in a summer, the young ones of the first nest keep together.