SOME GARDEN BIRDS 



tits and blue tits did not suffer so much, yet 

 many must have died, for they were not nearly 

 so numerous the following spring. I think 

 the pair belonging to the pump must have 

 perished too, for it was not occupied that spring. 

 Early in March a pair of great tits did turn up 

 and go in and out of the pump as if house- 

 hunting, but they went away again, and the 

 pump stood empty all that breeding season. 

 Had they been the old couple I do not think 

 they would have deserted their home in this 

 way. The visitors must have been a young 

 pair looking for a nesting place. For another 

 spring the pump remained deserted, but now 

 it is reoccupied, and once more a tit family 

 have been reared in it, and the hungry twitter- 

 ing of the young birds, together with the 

 anxious chatter of the old ones, can be heard 

 most of the day. 



(The Pied Wagtail is known scientifically as Motacilla 

 a. lugubris ; the name of the Willow Wren, or Willow 

 Warbler, is Phylloscopus t. trochilus, and the Great 

 Tit is known as Parus major newtoni.) 



218 



