WILD LIFE: FURRED AND FEATHERED. 45 



of which the half of a cocoa-nut shell was hung. In this 

 a pair of tits nested, and she had great enjoyment in 

 watching their pretty movements from the bed on which 

 she lay. The great titmouse, the coal tit, the marsh tit, 

 and the lovely little blue tit, all came to the tree where I 

 hung my bone or bits of suet. The coal tit is not so often 

 met with as the great tit and the blue tit, but you may 

 happen to find his nest, lined with wool and moss and 

 rabbit's fur, jn an old mouse burrow in a bank more often 

 though in a hole of a tree stem or a crevice in a wall. 

 Not till April, although that of the great tit is found earlier. 

 The blue tit is called locally Billy-biter, owing to her 

 plucky way of defending her young ; she will peck at the 

 fingers of the thief as she sits on her eggs, and hiss like a 

 snake. These pretty little creatures ought to be encouraged 

 in gardens, for they feed their young with the larvae off 

 our gooseberry bushes, and with aphides that infest the 

 trees, whilst the parent birds devour the grubs of wood- 

 boring beetles, maggots, spiders, and other insects. The 

 marsh tit is supposed to be much less common than the 

 two last mentioned, yet he may often be seen near rivers, 

 about the alder trees and pollarded willows, and in orchards 

 and gardens. 



Another interesting bird to note, although more difficult 

 to observe, is the tree creeper. It might almost be taken 

 for some other creature instead of a bird, owing to the way 

 it moves upwards, downwards, and round about the trunk 

 of the old tree, on which it hunts for spiders and other 

 insects that are to be found in the crevices of the bark. 

 Its long curved claws help it in climbing, and the tail 

 feathers being then depressed, the colouring of the bird too 

 being brown and of a buff-white, it is not readily dis- 



