Tomtits.
Seed-eating birds, as their uncle told them, have short, stout, hard bills, just the thing for shelling seeds. The insect-eaters have longer and more slender bills; while birds that live upon both seeds and insects have bills hard enough to shell seeds and yet long and sharp enough to pick insects out of their hiding-places.
So many birds came to the feast, that Uncle George cleared the snow from another part of the lawn and spread some dry ashes upon it. Upon one patch he scattered seeds and crumbs, and on the other he placed a large flat dish.
In this dish were put all sorts of waste scraps from the kitchen, such as bones, potatoes, and pieces of meat. Uncle George did this so that the boys could tell flesh-eating birds from those that lived upon seeds.
Starling.
The starlings came to the dish first, and fought among themselves for the food, although there was much more than enough for them all.
Then came a few rooks, who walked about the dish in quite a lordly way. Every now and again one of them would seize a huge crust of bread or a potato in his clumsy bill and fly with it a short distance away. The starlings, thrushes, and blackbirds hopped nimbly about, picking up a choice morsel here and there.
The new patch was often crowded with finches of all kinds. The boys noticed that many of the birds fed at both places. Among these were sparrows, robins, chaffinches, thrushes, and starlings. These birds, their uncle explained to them, fed on a mixed food of insects, seeds, and fruits.
It amused them very much to watch how the rooks and jackdaws always dragged the food away from the dish, as if they were stealing it; while now and then a blackbird would fly away with a loud chatter, as if he had been suddenly found out whilst doing something very wrong.