THE BLUE TITMOUSE 65 



their cradle ; and should you reward their perseverance by 

 letting them alone, the hen will lay her eight little eggs 

 and forthwith begin sitting. 



And if you bide your time till the eggs be hatched, and 

 then go to the nest, you may have proof of their bravery, for 

 they will boldly attack you, fighting with you with bill and 

 claw : in sooth, you may catch the cock thus, so eager is 

 he for his young. Indeed, so furiously will they rage, that 

 if you have a spark of sympathy in your character, you will 

 give the little blue-headed captain an honourable truce, and 

 leave him until his young be reared, and eight more little 

 blue-capped warriors are sent forth to fight and steal your 

 currants, or in cold winter feed upon the beef rib-bones you 

 hang forth in your garden to sustain him and his kin ; for 

 if he does much havoc he does much good, for his young 

 family is always fed upon cankers culled from your garden 

 plants, or moths, which he catches after the manner of the 

 fly-catcher, and in grey winter he searches over your rotten 

 bark and delves out insects upon which he feeds, hanging 

 now back-down, now sideways, now standing haughtily on a 

 branch, as he threatens a too curious young sparrow who 

 would fain share his food with him. The " pick-cheese " 

 never leaves his birthplace far ; indeed I have known them 

 to sleep in winter in the very place wherein they were hatched 

 — a hole in an old mill. 



And when the leaves have fallen from the trees and the 

 marshlands are bare, you may perchance find them feeding 

 upon a dead horse, whose carcase has been dragged forth 

 from some dyke ; and as you pass along the soppy land you 

 may see a flock of these blue-headed rovers on the dead 

 horse, like blue-bottles upon a corpse, though they eat 

 maggots whilst the flies blow them, and therein lies one 

 distinction. 



Or later, in the dead of winter, when the flocks and herds 

 have been driven from the marshes, you will find the blue 

 " pick-cheeses " in the alders by the grey river searching for 



