1(34 THE PRANKS OF THE TUFTED TITMOUSE. 



gun-sliop and made her nest on a shelf among some 

 bottles near the place I was working, hatching and 

 rearing a brood. The}^ always build a long oi- 

 deep nest, with a neck tln-ee or fonr inches in 

 length for an entrance. They are easily petted if 

 fed on screenings and nuts, coming daily for their 

 meals to the window-sill or any other feeding place." 



My obliging correspondent has also furnished 

 me with a description of a quaint trick of one of 

 these acute little geniuses in plumes. This inci- 

 dent took place in the house of one of their neigh- 

 bors. The bird entered the house by the broken 

 sash of an upstairs window, and then flew down 

 the stairway into the kitchen, and thence into the 

 sitting-room where the mistress had placed some 

 cracked nuts on a bureau. Somehow he had es- 

 pied them, and now began eating until his hunger 

 was appeased, chirping familiarly all the while, 

 and then taking a kernel in his beak, he flew to the 

 kitchen, up the stairway, and out into the open 

 air by way of the broken sash. And, strange to 

 say, this cunning trick was repeated day after day 

 until a prowling cat caught the bird. 



The tufted tit deserves a sonnet all to himself, 

 but as I am not a poet, but a plain writer of prose, 

 I cainiot ring his praises in verse. However, in 



