LONG-TAILED TITMOUSE. 149 



throughout tlie year, and even in the hardest winters 

 finds subsistence upon minute seeds or the insect 

 atoms, which, with ceaseless energy, it extracts from 

 the crevices in the bark of trees. How often I have 

 watched them, when covert- shooting in autumn, come 

 streaming along in advance of the beaters, as the game 

 was bemg driven towards the end of the wood. More 

 curious apparently about the cause of disturbance than 

 alarmed by the guns, they keep up a constant twitter- 

 ing; now passing from tree to tree in one undulating 

 line, their small bunchy figures and long tails looking 

 like so many little arrows going the backwards way, now 

 setthng for an instant amongst the "high fell" till the 

 tapping of sticks and the shouts of the men start them 

 again on the wing. Marvellous also is that structure of 

 moss, lichens, and feathers — a perfect triumph of skill 

 and industry — which we find built into our fences and 

 bushes, as well as on the branches of trees, and so 

 securely placed, as Mr. Yarrell remarks, that it is 

 necessary to cut out the portion of the bush containing 

 it to preserve the appearance and form of the nest. I 

 have seen them built into gooseberry and currant- 

 bushes, with sprigs passing through and supporting 

 them, exactly in the same manner as the reed- warblers' 

 nests described in my notice of that species. Fre- 

 quently as I have examined these ^^feather-pokes," as 

 they are aptly termed (one only having been known 

 to contain 2,379 feathers of various kinds'^), I have 

 never observed the second aperture described by some 

 authors; and impossible as it may appear for the old birds 

 and some twelve or fourteen young ones to find room to 

 move in their soft retreat, every youngster in turn 



* Morris's " British Birds," vol. i., p. 278. 



