VIII. 



POCKET MAKERS. 



THE bush-tits are cousins of the eastern chick- 

 adees, which is reason enough for liking them, 

 although the California fruit growers have a more 

 substantial reason in the way the birds eat the 

 scale that injures the olive-trees. The bush-tits 

 might be the little sisters of the chickadee family, 

 they are so small. They look like gray balls 

 with long tails attached, for they are plump fluffy 

 tots, no bigger than your thumb, without their 

 tails. One of them, when preoccupied, once came 

 within three feet of where I stood. When he 

 discovered me a comical look of surprise came 

 into his yellow eyes and he went tilting off, for 

 his long tail gave him a pitching flight as if he 

 were about to go on his bill, a flight that re- 

 minds one of the tail that wagged the dog. 



There were so many of the gray pocket nests 

 in the oaks that it was hard to choose which to 

 watch, but one of the most interesting hung from 

 a branch of the big double oak of the gnat- 

 catchers, above the ranch-house, where I could 

 see it when sitting in the crotch of the tree. 

 While watching it I looked beyond over the chap- 



