THE GREAT TITMOUSE 37 



hair and feathers, and the female lays from eight to fourteen eggs, 

 white marked with reddish-brown spots. 



The parent pair of blue-tits have been observed to feed their 

 nestlings with small caterpillars 470 times in one day, chiefly 

 brought from apple and other fruit trees and bushes. Insects also 

 enter largely into the dietary of the adult and fledged birds 

 during the summer, and in winter feed upon seeds, eggs and pupae 

 of insects. During severe weather blue tits are bold and active, 

 prying almost everywhere for food, scanning buds closely for aphid 

 and moth eggs, and we have known them clear apple trees of mussel 

 scale. They are also very fond of meat, also sunflower seeds, picking 

 them out of the heads before fully matured. For thistle seeds the 

 blue-tits have some partiality and for beech-nuts. They are also 

 very destructive to ripening pears and apples by pecking them near 

 the stalks, while sometimes they take green peas out of the pods. 



The GREAT TITMOUSE (Parus major) is about 6 in. long, with 

 its head and throat glossy black, and a white patch under each 

 eye, back olive or ashy green, and body underneath greenish-yellow 

 with a black, broad stripe down its entire length. It is solitary 

 in habits, bold, but retiring, and not so common as the blue tit. 

 The nest is made in holes in walls, trees, decayed posts, and similar 

 places, and the young birds are reared by the parent birds generally 

 on small caterpillars and grubs ; but we have known a whole row 

 of green peas cleared out of the pods by the parents of a nest of 

 young birds in the hole of a wall near. The great tits, however, 

 do not peck pears so much as the blue-tits, feeding largely upon 

 insects and their larvae. In winter time it feeds upon seeds as well 

 as eggs of aphids and moths and other insects, and also hibernating 

 pests, with pupae, and though said to be destructive to buds of 

 fruit-bushes and trees, this is not consonant with our experience. 

 It is particularly fond of fat meat. 



The MEADOW PIPIT (Anthus pratensis) belongs to the Dentirostral 

 Perchers and is included in the sub-family of the Motacillinae or 

 Wagtails. The bill is of moderate length, and slender with the tip 

 of the upper mandible notched and curved. The hinder claw 

 is long, in which and the development of the tertiary quills it 

 chiefly resembles the skylark, and in its similar plumage. The 

 tail is elongated, and the length of the bird is 6 in. It 

 resembles the wagtail in running swiftly on the ground, chasing 

 insects, and vibrating its tail after the habit of that bird. Hilly 

 grounds, commons, and meadows are its chief resorts in summer, 

 but during September and October flocks of meadow pipits or tit- 

 larks may be seen congregated in stubbles and in turnip fields, 

 and, like the skylarks, feed on any exposed or badly covered seed- 

 corn. Its food, however, consists chiefly of insects. The nest of 

 the titlark is made on the ground ; eggs, five or six, light brown 

 in colour, spotted with a darker tint, 



