December 



company in recognition of my bounty. He is a 

 bold little man, and takes his stand as a rule on 

 the top of my bookshelves, whence he shouts his 

 churring notes at me in pure wrath. Deeds of blood 

 are set to the account of the great-tit, and one can 

 well credit them as one watches the bird stand, its 

 powerful claws spread, and head drawn up ere it 

 brings it down like a hammer, the stroke of the 

 strong beak on the board sounding like that made 

 by a woodpecker. 



Although I am unable to adduce conclusive 

 evidence of the dark deeds of the great-tit, I have 

 good reason to believe in them. Last autumn I 

 picked up from the grass plot in my garden the 

 body of a mouse with freshly trepanned skull, minus 

 the little brain, which had not been smart enough to 

 enable its owner to elude what I have little doubt to 

 have been the savagery of its namesake, the great 

 tit-mouse. The crown had been quartered from 

 nose to nape and from ear to ear, the skin laid back, 

 the skull battered in, and the brain-case picked 

 clean. Save that one of its eyes had started 

 from its socket, the mouse was in all other respects 

 intact. 



The coal-tit is a regular, if rarer, visitor to my 

 garden during the winter months, and is readily to 

 be recognized by the conspicuous white patch on the 

 nape. Its weaker, shriller call-note is in keeping 

 with the bird's character, which is less vehement 

 than that of either the great-tit or the blue-tit. Its 



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