A TIT ACROBAT 17 



be hlase^ indeed, who could ever be tired of noting 

 your ways, though he might well be weary of 

 following you about amongst the delicate larches, 

 which are most your fairy home and in which you 

 look most fairy-like. Such a dance as you lead 

 him ! For always you are passing on, making a 

 hasting, running examination of the twigs of the 

 trees you flit through, searching systematically, from 

 one to another, in a sort of aerial forced-march, 

 which makes you — oh, birdikins ! — most difficult to 

 watch. Like other tits, you — Oh, but hang the 

 apostrophe ; I can't sustain it, so must drop, again 

 — and I think for ever — into the sober third person. 

 Like other tits, then, these little long-tailed ones 

 are fond of hanging, head downwards, on the under 

 side of a bough or twig : but I am not sure if 

 I have seen other tits come down on a bough or 

 twig in this way — at any rate not to the same extent. 

 Say that a blue or a great tit, and a long-tailed one, 

 are both on the same bough, together. The two 

 former will fly, or flutter-fly, to another, alight 

 upon its upper side, and get round to its under one, 

 by a process that can be seen. The long-tailed tit 

 will jump and arrive on the under side, hanging 

 there head downwards. That, at least, is what it 

 looks like, as if he had turned himself on his back, 

 in the air, before seizing hold of his twig. Really 

 there is a little swing down, after seizing it — like 

 an acrobat on a trapeze — but this is so quick that 

 it eludes the eye. It is by his legerdemain and 

 illusion, and by his jumping, rather than flying, 

 from bough to bough, that the long-tailed tit is 

 distinguished. He often makes a good long jump 



