Things in Trees

Home for a Bird

Finally I found a place to put this thing!

Trusty birdfeeder

Milk-cow owners who couldn't afford a fancy cream separator would pour fresh milk into this pail and in the morning the cream would be sunk to the bottom and would be drained off via the spout.

As you will see from the comments, my mistaken notion that cream is heavier than milk has been corrected. The caption beneath the pail above is a perfect example of my apparently skewed logic, which still doesn't allow me to believe that cream is lighter than milk or, for instance, that buttermilk is less fatty than milk. And yet -- cream rises to the top, so it must be lighter even though it looks thicker and heavier, as does buttermilk. I've never been able to make sense of it.