100 BIBD NOTES 



violence ; one would have thought the old bird 

 wanted to dig up a rose-tree. It was an amusing 

 sight, and she must have gone on with her 

 excavations for a quarter of an hour or more. I 

 saw young thrushes being fed too. There were 

 sparrows and chaffinches innumerable, also robins 

 and a water-wagtail. I think that now the roses 

 are coming out, the insects form a great attraction 

 to the birds. If Miss Ormerod could see the way 

 in which the young sparrows pounce down upon 

 the rose-trees here, and strip them of blight, she 

 would no longer doubt that they eat it. Eat it 

 when they can get it, that is ; but when they are 

 older and heavier it is not so easy. A sparrow 

 cannot hang on the point of a leaf or sit on a 

 bud as a tit does ; but where sparrows can rest, 

 there they will feed greedily on the aphides. I 

 think, to judge by the way in which they tumble 

 about, they have to learn by experience what will 

 support them. 



July 1, 1885. 



The birds that I supposed were blackcaps may 

 have been marsh tits. I had a young marsh tit 

 yesterday on the roses close at hand, making the 

 same complaining little note. The black head 

 deceived me. 



My robin is in and out of the window con- 

 tinually, feeding on the bacon scraps that I place 



