Food for the Singing Birds.

Plant honey-yielding trees and shrubs, is sound advice for New Zealanders who love to hear the notes of the tui and the bellbird. Not only our own trees, such as the yellow kowhai but the red gum, the most handsome of the eucalyptus family. The birds are fond of the nectar contained in the gum flowers, and lately the tui has been seen and heard in places around the towns which have not harboured it for many a day. Every landowner, no matter on how small a scale, can spare a little ground for tree-planting, and if he avoids the sombre and depressing pinus insignis page 54 and takes some pains to grow plants of food value, in berries and nectar, he will often be rewarded with bird-song and the lovely sight of the bush creatures flitting about his groves. The tui especially will travel a long way for the food it likes. It seems only fair to these sweet singers and other native birds that we should make some recompense for the destruction of their natural foraging grounds—the ancient forests—by providing for them nooks of fruitfulness in the settled lands and in the gardens on the outskirts of the towns. In this way we may preserve for many years longer some of the most precious wild things of our country.