VARYING FECUNDITY IN BIRDS 187 



other hand, the resident small birds and rarely undertaken except when 

 finches, buntings, and so forth are in the first was despoiled. Still, taking 

 the best of health and spirits at the into consideration the number of finches' 

 earliest limits of the. breeding season, nests that fall victims to the bird- 

 Winter has passed and hardened them, nester, it is probable the tits rear more 

 food is becoming abundant, the sun- young in each summer than the finches 

 shine is lengthening, and they are full do. The tits are never the prey of 

 of health and spirits. Neither at the the bird-catcher who annually robs 

 further end of the season are they our woods and hedgerows of hundreds 

 hampered by the needs or anticipa- of thousands of finches (of which 75 

 ting of migration, and so a second per cent, die miserably in the first 

 brood is for them the simplest of month of their captivity). Why then 

 possibilities. More than this, there should the tits be so prolific ? Their 

 seems to be need of a great number of dangerous hour comes later than it 

 them to serve as autumn scavengers, does to the finches, but is more severe, 

 and to kill off the vast swarms of insects The tit feeds mainly on insect food 

 on the cultivated lands after the nest- all the year round, and in the winter 

 ing time is ended, and with which insect food is extremely scarce and 

 the catering of encumbered parent difficult to obtain. I have occasionally 

 birds is powerless to cope. Although watched the tits in my garden through 

 the finches thus annually produce four a whole winter's day, and with the 

 or five times their own number, yet strongest glasses have failed to satisfy 

 by the next spring each family of myself that they found a single morsel 

 finches will usually have dwindled of food other than what I artificially 

 down again to a pair : for what the provided, although I postponed my 

 bird-catcher has spared the winter meal to them on those days to see how 

 takes. they progressed without it. More than 

 2. THE TITS AND THE WREN. this, since I gave special care to the 

 These birds during the nesting season feeding of the tits in the winter, the 

 feed on a diet very similar to that pre- tits are certainly becoming far more 

 ferred by the finches and warbler common in the grounds, and we have 

 tribe, and they lay from six to twelve eight or nine nests where we used only 

 eggs in a clutch ; I am convinced a to have one or two. In a winter walk 

 second brood is abnormal with them, my terrier has found as many as a 



