Home › Contents › How Birds Get Their Christmas Dinner

How Birds Get Their Christmas Dinner

ORWAY is a land of snow the inhabitants of Norway, of which I and, lying in the north must tell you. As in all European counof Europe, the climate is tries, they make a great deal of Christcolder than that in which mas. This is a merry-making time, when we live, and those beauti- everybody is expected to be happy. Santa ful scenes of tropical love- Claus comes there with his gifts, and liness, of which travellers passes from house to house, always regive us such glowing ac- membering children, especially the good counts, are never found there. Still Nor- ones. Christmas there is a lovely day, way has its summer, and there are periods full of mirth and enjoyment, and no of the year when snow and ice are as rare sooner is it over than people begin to as they are in any part of America. Even think of the Christmas that will come a the Greenlander loves his bleak and snow-year later. covered country; so the Norwegians think their land is the finest in the world.

There is a very beautiful custom among Now, as in all countries where snow abounds, there are birds which find it pretty difficult to obtain their food in the winter season.

The leaves have all fallen If you look at the annexed engraving from the trees, the grass is withered in you will see a picture of a Norwegian the fields, no insects, which afford food building. It looks as if it were top. for most of the feathered tribes, can be obtained, and the little songsters are liable to starve. So among the Norwegians there is a cus. tom of always supplying Christmas dinner for the wild birds. Sheaves of wheat, or some other kind of grain, are fastened to poles, and these are erected near some a building. The grain is in its natural state, has not been threshed from the chaff, and the wild birds flock around it and pick out the seeds.

They even lodge in these sheaves and turn them into a winter home, thus mm