136 Bird Comrades 



about their dietary habits. It is the first of January, 

 and we are in a wooded hollow. There is a tufted tit- 

 mouse; now he flits to the ground, picks up a tidbit, 

 darts up to a twig, places his morsel under his claws, 

 and proceeds to peck it to pieces. Our binocular shows 

 that it is something yellow, but we cannot make out what 

 it is. As we draw near, the bird seizes the fragment with 

 his bill perhaps he fears we will filch it from him 

 and flits about among the bushes on the steep bank, 

 looking for a place to stow his " goody. " Presently he 

 pushes it into a crevice of the bark, hammers it tightly 

 into place, and darts away with a merry chirp. We go 

 to the spot and find that his hidden treasure is a grain of 

 corn which he has purloined from the farmer's field on 

 the slope. A few minutes later another tit or the same 

 one slyly thrusts a morsel in among some leaves and 

 twigs on the bank, even pulling the leaves down over it 

 for a screen. It turns out to be a small acorn. That 

 is one of Master Tit's ways storing away provisions 

 for a time of need. With his stout, conical beak he is 

 able to break the shell of an acorn, peck a corn grain into 

 swallowable bits, and tear open the toughest casing of a 

 cocoon. He will even break the hard pits of the dog- 

 wood berry to secure the kernel within, the ground below 

 often being strewn with the shell fragments. No danger 

 of Par us bicolor coming to want or going to the poorhouse. 

 Another day the j uncos are feeding on the seeds of the 

 foxtail or pigeon grass, in an old orchard hard by the 

 border of the woods. Sometimes they will make a dinner 



