PARUS CCERULEUS. 329 



and activity stamp it as pertness personified. It has all the 

 characteristics of the last ; its notes are similar ; and also builds 

 in holes of trees and walls, but lays more eggs. I have got 

 sixteen in one nest, in defence of which it will die rather than 

 desert. One day when breaking the decayed stump of a tree 

 one was found sitting on fourteen eggs, off which she had to be 

 forcibly taken before she would fly. Hewitson says — " A pair 

 took possession of a hole in a tree where pied fly-catchers had 

 reared their young for four years, and, wishing them still to do 

 so, the tit's nest and sixteen eggs were taken out, yet the tit 

 would not leave the hole, for I saw it repeatedly afterwards for 

 some weeks sitting on the bare wood." When over on Tentsmuir, 

 on June 7th, 1886, I saw a blue tit sitting on her nest in the 

 hole of a birch tree, four feet up, in the old fir park wood. The 

 entrance hole was only 1J inches, while the bird was 5 inches 

 down, so I could not get down my hand ; but, although I struck 

 the tree repeatedly with a branch, she would not come out. I 

 cut the hole larger with my knife, till I could touch her, but 

 still she would not budge, neither did she try to bite me, but dourly 

 sat still. I was a quarter of an hour at this, but still she sat. 

 I wrenched away part of the rotten tree, and laid both her and 

 her nest bare, and still she sat. I went aside four yards and 

 watched the result ; in four minutes she flew quietly away. I 

 looked in and found the cause of her solicitude, the nest filled 

 with new hatched young. I carefully replaced the broken bark 

 and waited twenty minutes ; she came and flew down to the 

 hole a score of times, but always flew off again. I lost patience 

 and went away, but I have no doubt maternity would conquer 

 fear, that she would go in and rear her young. The cavity in 

 which the nest lay was barely three inches in diameter, hardly 

 room to hold it. On May 9th, 1863, I got three of their nests, 

 with fresh eggs, near the gamekeeper's house at Mountmelville ; 

 one in the hole of a tree, another in a hole under the slates of 

 the low house, the third in a small nest-box placed on a tree by 

 his son. To show its persistency — on March 4th a pair began 

 building in the letter-box at the lodge gate of Duncarse House. 

 The keeper cleared out the material three times, but the little 

 tenants persisted in building till pertinacity won, for he allowed 

 them to finish it and rear their young till they flew, undisturbed 

 by the reception and removal of the letters and newspapers 

 daily. Curiously, in 1889, another pair did the very same in 

 the letter-box at the farm of Whitepark, Castle Douglas, for, 

 although the materials were frequently thrown out, they also 



