74 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
occasionally seen individual fruit nearly one-fourth ot 
which had been thus destroyed by small birds of 
some kind. Such mischievous practices, however, 
are confined almost entirely to hot and dry weather, 
when moisture is not to be otherwise obtained, and 
the birds are parched with thirst. The rook at such 
The Great Tit. 
times will carry off the succulent tubers of the potato ; 
and many other birds are driven by sheer necessity 
to make free with fruits, &c., which at other seasons 
they seldom or never touch—just as Kaffirs eagerly 
seek and devour during drought the roots of the 
babiana plant, for which, when water is plentiful, 
they care nothing. 
