132 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



trod near the nest, the clamour of the young birds 

 from hearing the footfall would betray them. 



Though the process was not systematic, the parents 

 more or less fed the young in shifts, the female on 

 the whole bearing the larger share in a total sixteen- 

 seventeen hours' day. But the male, while actually 

 doing less work, accomplished more results by con- 

 fining his foraging nearer at home than the hen- 

 bird. This was a suggestive example of male and 

 female differentiation. The female is more conser- 

 vative, stable and routine-bound than the male ; he 

 plays the more adventurous, dynamic, individual part. 

 Why, then, did she go further abroad than he 

 did ? Presumably because, in a wilder environ- 

 ment, both parents go further abroad for food 

 than my garden-space represents. But in gardens 

 with fruit trees and herbaceous borders, there are 

 ample supplies close at beak. The male, so I con- 

 jecture, recognized this ; the female was more obedient 

 to " sub-conscious memory." 



The first brood seemed to assume the toga without 

 any examinations, for though they were in the nest 

 one evening, they were gone early the next morning, 

 and I saw nothing of them again except in the 

 middle of the da}*, which they spent with their parents 

 in a sycamore-tree three gardens away, toing and 

 froing among the branches and drinking large draughts 

 of the intoxicating open day. The other family was 

 less advanced, and one morning in the middle of June 

 there was an irruption of five great tits, parent and 

 four young, taking possession of a new playground. 

 They soon discovered that curious noises (not unlike 

 their own a fortnight before) were rising out of a hole 

 in a box, and they all went pell-mell over to it. 

 They perched on the top of the box, while their 

 parent sat on a cross-piece of wood a yard away, 

 looking indulgently on ; and the hen blue -tit, who 

 happened to be feeding the young, poked her head 

 out to see what was going on and then flew away. 

 One of the oxeyes then grew so inquisitive that he 

 perched on a rose spray outside the box. Just then 



