142 THE BIRDS OF THE BRITISH ISLES. 



the nut. It swings beneath the suet bag, caHing up its friends 

 with its sharp tee, tee, tee, and scolding them with an angry 

 churr, its cobalt crest erected, when they come for their share. 

 It is an irascible little bird. The song period lasts almost all 

 the year round, but it is only from January until June that its 

 rippling tinkle, simple but very cheerful, is heard frequently, 

 but we may hear it anywhere; the Tom-Tit lives near or 

 actually in our houses, if there is a convenient hole in the wall, 

 but it is as common along the lanes or in the thick wood. It 

 is at once plucky and cautious. Man it fears but litde ; I have 

 trapped it, put a ring on its leg and released it, and caught it 

 again within a few minutes and several times later ; it merely 

 raised its crest, churred and bit each time I took it out. A 

 pair annually occupy a hole in an old oak, and one year a 

 couple of acquisitive Sparrows began to remove the nesting 

 material — until the Tits arrived. During the hostilities an 

 interlocked Sparrow and Tit fell to the ground pecking furiously, 

 but the robbers retired quickly without any spoils ; when, how- 

 ever, a couple of Great Tits cast an envious eye on the hole the 

 Blues remained at a safe distance, merely expostulating. Blues 

 and Greats are constant and apparently amicable companions 

 in the winter flocks, and the former are perhaps the better 

 gymnasts in the slender twigs. A Blue will often ascend a 

 trunk in short jerky hops, imitating a Creeper. 



The Blue Tit is a valuable destroyer of pests, though it has 

 not an entirely clean sheet as a beneficial species. It is fond 

 of young buds of various trees, and though it may pull them to 

 bits in the hope of finding insects, the damaged and undamaged 

 buds examined after a raid show little sign of having been 

 previously infected. No species, however, destroys more 

 coccids and aphids, the worst foes of many plants ; examples 

 killed when attacking ripe pears, which it can seldom resist, 

 had in their stomachs a number of fruit-tree pests, including 

 American blight, mixed up with the fruit pulp. When in 



