158 THE GREAT TITMOUSE 



crust, the birds being enticed to a certain spot by scattering bits 

 of bait there for a few days with the trap or traps unset. 



FIG. 98. BRICK BIRD TRAP. 



References : m, side bricks ; n, end brick ; o, fall brick ; p, peg driven into ground ; 

 q, table ; r, prop. 



GREAT TITMOUSE. This bird is not nearly so common as blue 

 tomtits and does not hunt nearly so closely for insects, yet it is 

 largely insectivorous, with a pronounced appetite for fruit, such as 

 yew berries, kernels of beech-mast and hazel-nuts, and in gardens 

 sometimes takes green peas, particularly in hot, dry weather and 

 near a brood, and also harms pears and apples by pecking them near 

 the stalk. It, like the blue titmouse, prefers sunflower seed to 

 everything in the garden, though the aparian says bees, and the 

 farmer avers grain when it pulls straws out of thatch. Possibly 

 all are right in their deductions, but for keeping tomtits from peck- 

 ing pears and apples we advise sunflowers to be grown so as to ripen 

 the seed in advance of and along with the fruit. If the beekeeper 

 must destroy the bird, a bait of a portion of sunflower head in seed 

 on the table of a small bird-trap, or a bit of fat meat in winter time, 

 if set rear the hives will make end of the depredator. Fruit-growers 

 may act in a similar manner if the bird becomes refractory, and 

 recourse had to the gun where the numbers are so increased as to 

 necessitate speedy relevance. 



MEADOW PIPIT. The forester and gardener has nothing to com- 

 plain about respecting this bird, and the farmer very little, as with 

 proper covering of seed-corn it does no harm but good by de- 

 stroying insects, though varying its diet with vegetables and seeds. 

 It feeds largely on the eggs and young of slugs which are deposited 

 and lurk in the debris of meadows, and otherwise clears the surface 

 of numberless insect pests, It ought to be protected all the year. 



