314 SUMMER. 



In summer there are few birds in the alpine forests 

 more active than the little colemouse ; and when one 

 walks through a forest of tall pines at that season, it is 

 so diminished by the height at which it is seen, and 

 seems to meet with so little resistance from the air, 

 that it looks a bee there, and a beetle when it is on 

 the trees. In the autumn, when insects are few, it has 

 recourse to vegetable food, and it shows a good deal 

 both of vigour and dexterity in picking the seeds of 

 the pines from under the hard scales of the cone. Its 

 little nest is very neat, and carefully concealed in a 

 thick bush, or in the hole of a tree, but we have not 

 met with it at any great height above the ground. 

 The eggs are very small, generally about eight in num- 

 ber, but sometimes as many as twelve. They are very 

 white, and mottled with rusty red. The rearing of so 

 numerous a brood keeps the little things in great 

 activity during the season ; and minute as they are, 

 they show a great deal of courage in defence of their 

 young. These are not, indeed, very much exposed to 

 danger, as they are generally seated deep among the 

 bushes, through which a bird larger than a colemouse 

 cannot easily find its way. The colemouse is not 

 found in any part of the country that is destitute of 

 timber, and it is much less frequent in the coppices 

 among cultivated fields, than in the woods on the 

 slopes and among the dells of the mountains. The 

 accurate Low does not enumerate it among the birds of 

 Orkney, and we never met with it in the Hebrides. 



The marsh titmouse, which, though it is nowhere 

 found in the same localities with the colemouse, has 

 sometimes been confounded with it, is by no means 



