250 BIRD WATCHING 



in just the same way. It is marvellous what slender 

 little twigs this bird will perch on, without their giving 

 way beneath his round burly form. Sometimes they 

 do give way, and then he swings about on them like 

 a ball at the end of a piece of string, nor does he get 

 off on to another one without a good deal of turmoil, 

 and some climbing, which cannot be called quite fairy- 

 like. In fact, he is awkward but in the most graceful 

 manner imaginable. Harpagon, as we know, " avait 

 grace a tousser" and when a bird like the bullfinch 

 condescends, for a moment, to be awkward, his charm 

 is merely enhanced. Yet I cannot call him deft in 

 the procurement of buds, as the blue-tit is, with whom 

 he comes into competition, and whom he will drive 

 away. He does not hang nibbling at them head 

 downwards, as though to the manner born, and then 

 swing up again on a twig-trapeze. These things, if 

 not beyond him, are, at least, alien to his disposi- 

 tion, which is straightforward, and to his deportment, 

 which has a certain sobriety. His plan, therefore, is 

 to advance along the twig as far as it seems to him 

 advisable to go, and then, stretching forward and 

 elongating his neck, take a sharp bite at the bud, 

 which, with his powerful bill, secures it at once 

 unless he fails. In the same way, he will stretch out 

 from the twig he is on, to secure the bud on another, 

 but this he does still more cautiously. At the blue- 

 tit, when feeding on the same tree, he will sometimes 

 make little dashes, driving him away. He has, in fact, 

 just done so (only in this instance it was the hen bird) 

 three times in succession. And now a fourth time 

 has this hen bullfinch made a dash at the blue-tit. 

 The tit, each time, flutters away easily, and without 



