THE TITS 



marsh-tits seemed rather to prefer the small plantations bordering the 

 Broad. Both Tits and nuthatches are said to cling to the bark of trees 

 and roost head downwards. Mr. Boraston noticed that some of his 

 early-morning tit visitors in the winter " had their tails askew, as if 

 their sleeping apartments had not been over-spacious." He also 

 says : "One blue-tit, which I kept overnight in a sudden frost, stowed 

 itself closely in a corner of the cage until it bethought itself of a small 

 gallipot in another corner, when it entered it and nestled down as if 

 it had been a nest, sleeping embedded in a liberal lining of ants' eggs 

 which had remained over from supper." l 



The ordinary call-notes of the Tits are varied and confusing, and 

 cannot be adequately described in words. The would-be student 

 miist go into the woods and worry them out for himself. Not one of 

 the members of this group can be said to attain the dignity of song, 

 though the great-tit is capable of producing a variety of sounds, and 

 frequently mimics other birds. During the breeding season he gives 

 vent to a prolonged call, when desirous of expressing that emotion 

 which sometimes turns the dullest and most prosaic of beings into a 

 singer or poet. But even at his best, the great- tit's so-called " song " is 

 more remarkable for cheerfulness than for quality. Yet one day I was 

 puzzled by a musical call-note often repeated and ending in a curious 

 clanging trill, like the ringing of a blacksmith's anvil. Eventually I 

 found these sounds were produced by a great-tit, whose usual notes 

 resemble the sharpening of a saw. 



The song of the coal-tit is a weaker edition of the great-tit's. It 

 consists of the same double notes I have elsewhere likened to "teacher, 

 teacher, tee-cher, teach " ; but the coal-tit drops the final " teach" and his 

 notes are altogether thinner and sharper than those of his relative. 

 Inasmuch as these notes are chiefly confined to the breeding season, 

 they are by courtesy called a " song." Its ordinary call-note is sharp 

 and shrill. When hunting with a party of goldcrests coal-tits are de- 

 cidedly noisy : the approach of a little company of these birds foraging 



1 Birds by Land and Sea, p. 56, 



