NOTES — ORIOINAI- AND SFXECTF.D. 



199 



the plan advocated in the following note in " Peter Lombard's " admirable 

 columns in "The Church Times." The writer says : " I have found that a coco- 

 nut sawn in half and hung in a tree is an unfailing souice of amusement to the 

 various ' tits ' in hard weather. I always hang one in a tree just outside my 

 nursery window, and thus provide pleasure both inside and outside the house. 

 Last winter, I think, altogether we put out three coconuts, which were cleaned 

 out as if they had been scraped with a knife. We used to have a constant succes- 

 sion of tits, ox-eyes, torn tits, blue-tits, coletits, and when the weather was very 

 hard we had long tail-tits, and a pretty little grey bird with a black head, which 

 I suppose was a stone-chat [probably the marsh-tit]. The robins were not above 

 having a taste when the supply of bread, bacon, and porridge, which I used to put 

 out, was finished. I found thrushes and blackbirds used to eat the porridge while 

 it was warm, but very soon it used to get frozen quite hard. Bones hung up in a 

 tree are very attractive to tits, but I think they preferred the coconut. I saw one 

 end off, make a hole with a hot wire, and tiiread a piece of string through the hole 

 and fasten it to the top of a thorn tree. 1 have already put one out, and it was 

 visited yesterday by a blue-tit. They lake a day or two to gain courage to settle 

 on it, but when once they get used to it it is rarely without an occupant." 



A " Hedge Priest " writes to a subsequent issue : '' What would your corre- 

 spondent about the tits think of a coconut in constant occupation, and lasting 

 no longer than a week ? I always have one suspended by a string from a yew- 

 tree just outside my dining-room window, 

 ind in hard weather not only is it incessantl}' 

 tenanted, but sometimes three or four other 

 tits are hanging on the string waiting their 

 turn, and though the coconut spins round at a 

 rapid pace, it does not seem in the least to 

 diminish their appetite for breakfast. One 

 little rascal turns another out in rapid succes- 

 sion, only to be chucked out by another whose 

 impatience gets the mastery over his manners. 

 Close by the 3'ew tree a couple of large stakes 

 ire driven into the lawn, upon each of which 

 IS suspended a common scap-box containing a 

 handful of maize, and the bustle and scurry 

 can only be likened to a railway station on a 

 Bank Holiday, as tits of all kinds come and 

 go in their eagerness to carry off the largest 

 grains, while humble sparrows, quite depressed 

 m spirits as they watch the fuss, hop about on 

 the grass waiting for bits to be dropped. 



" My most frequent visitants are the ox-eye 



(called by my little girl ' Mr. Gladstone,' on 



account of his big white collar), the blue-tit, 



the marsh-tit, and the coletit, and very 



occasionally a rarer kind comes also. I 



had a third soap-box, which gives great 



amusement, filled with Barcelona nuts for the nut-hatches, which they split 



with one dab of their bill in the most ingenious manner. I put a Brazil 



nut in amongst the small ones the other day, but they would have nothing 



A CHRISTMAS PARTY 



