28 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



accepting the spiders as the commonplaces of court- 

 ship. It is pleasant, too, later in the year, to watch 

 both parents busily hopping, scrambling, and pecking 

 over every bush in the shrubbery to fill the little 

 stomachs of eight or nine wee balls of blue fluff at 

 home. And when all the little fluff balls have tumbled 

 out of the nest and are introduced to the wide, wide 

 world by their excited parents, what a fuss goes on ! 

 The shrubbery seems all blue tits. 



ACROBATS AT DINNER. 



Under the iron rule of winter, however, self-pre- 

 servation is the tomtit's motto, and when he has 

 found a cocoanut hanging on a string I have not 

 noticed that he ever willingly permits any other 

 tomtit to partake of it. He cannot be on the watch 

 all day, however, and whenever his back is turned 

 other tomtits are not idle. Instead, too, of hanging 

 up the entire nut, you can bisect it, and make an 

 elegant trapeze out of each half by suspending it with 

 fairly taut strings or wires between two uprights. 

 Although a tit, perhaps, comes nearest to Sir Boyle 

 Roche's " bird," it cannot quite be in two places at 

 once ; so, while the master tit of the place is giving 

 his unrivalled trapeze performances and tight-rope 

 dancing feats at one half cocoanut, another tit will be 

 doing the same at the other, both hammering away 

 at the food with their quick chisel beaks as though 

 they had to catch a train the next minute. 



