The Blue-Tit. 159 



of them. In its habits this species does not greatly differ from its congeners : 

 wherever trees are it may be seen in more or less abundance, whether in forest, 

 plantation, orchard, shrubber}', garden, or hedgerow, and everywhere its various 

 calls may be heard as it searches the twigs and branches for food or amuses 

 itself in stripping off buds and leaves. Suddenly one of these mites leaves a tree 

 and with undulating flight crosses the open to some new field of operations, and 

 immediately all the Tits in that tree are after him in a wavering stream anxious 

 to see what he is about. 



The love-song of the Blue-Tit is not at all like its call-notes : I carefully took 

 it down, and went over it note by note, as a bird in the next garden repeated it: 

 this song was — Tec-tii-tit-hvee, tce-te-huce, tee-te-hvee ; I have also heard it sing — Wee, 

 wee, wee, tit-tit-titta:* the call-note, however, is tsee, tsee, tsee, and the call of the young 

 chee-zek, or sometimes te-uzza, chcc-zek ; the scolding-note is a sort of diminutive 

 chatter, Seebohm calls it " a harsh chattering note," which I think describes it 

 very aptly. 



In its food this bird is almost omnivorous : insects of all kinds (no matter 

 how large) and caterpillars, spiders, centipedes, fat, the brains of its sickly relatives, 

 fruit, nuts, seeds, bread, potato : all are eaten with relish. In winter, if a bone, 

 with a few fragments of meat adhering, is hung up, the Blue-Tit is not the most 

 backward of its family in taking advantage of it : it feeds its young on cater- 

 pillars, chiefly of the V-moth (Halia vauariaj .'\ 



The nest is placed in all kinds of situations : in holes in trees, walls, banks, 

 gravel-pits or gate-posts, in lamp-posts, old pumps, in niches in out-houses, on tops 

 of walls under overhanging thatches, and behind lattice-work of summer-houses : 

 but, whatever the cavity selected, it is thickly lined at the bottom, often at the 

 side, and (when exposed behind lattice-work) over-arched, with moss, dead leaves, 

 dried grass, feathers, and cobweb : the nest thus formed is entered either from the 

 top or front according to its method of construction ; a thick bed of feathers forms 

 the inner lining. The eggs, according to my experience, vary in number from 

 eight to ten for a full clutch, eight being the usual complement ; but some writers 

 have asserted positively that they have found twelve and even as many as eighteen 

 in a nest ; in all such cases I should strongl}^ suspect that two hen birds had 

 deposited in the same nest : ten is not a common number for I have ouly once 

 found a Blue-Tit on so many eggs; on one other occasion I took ten young ones 



* One of the commonest songs of the Blue-Tit consists of two or three shrill notes, followed by a 

 descending trill. 



t This being a Gooseberry-moth, the blunder has been made of crediting the Blue-Tit with eating 

 caterpillars of "the Gooseberrj- moth ( Abraxas gtossulatiataj" : I know of no British bird which will touch 

 this caterpillar. 



