70 BIRDS AND MAN 



of them, so long as he slept or did not watch them 

 too narrowly. 



Finding that blue tits were among the visitors 

 at the back, I hmig up some lumps of suet and a 

 cocoa-nut to the twigs of the bushes. The suet 

 was immediately attacked, but judging from the 

 suspicious way in which they regarded the round 

 brown object swinging in the wind, the Bath tits 

 had never before been treated to a cocoa-nut. 

 But though suspicious, it was plain that the singular 

 object greatly excited their curiosity. On the 

 second day they made the discovery that it was a 

 new and delightful dish invented for the benefit 

 of the blue tits, and from that time they were at it 

 at all hours, coming and going from morning till 

 night. There were six of them, and occasionally 

 they were all there at once, each one anxious to 

 secure a place, and never able when he got one to 

 keep it longer than three or four seconds at a time. 

 Looking upon them from an upper window, as they 

 perched against and flitted round and round the 

 suspended cocoa-nut, they looked like a gathering 

 of very large pale-blue flies flitting round and feeding 

 on medlar. 



No doubt the sparrow is the most abundant 

 species in Bath — I have got into a habit of not 



