318 SUMMER. 



In the pairing season this titmouse has a kind of cry ; 

 but it is simple and faint. 



But the most beautiful of all the titmice is the blue 

 titmouse, or blue-cap, (parus cceruleus), and it is also 

 one of the most widely diffused, most active in its 

 manners, and most numerous. It is rare, indeed, in 

 the wild alpine districts, but very plentiful in most of 

 the low and cultivated parts. The prevailing colour, 

 as the name implies, is blue. That of the head very 

 pure and brilliant, of the wings and tail clear, but of a 

 lighter shade, and on the throat and in a line along 

 the middle of the belly deep, in the male, but not of 

 so clear a tint. The nape and collar are of a beautiful 

 azure. The markings are : the cheeks and a band 

 above the eyes white, and the greater wing-covers tipt 

 with the same; the breast and sides pale yellow; a 

 streak of black before and behind the eyes, and the 

 blue on the nape, tinted with grey and green. At the 

 same time that it is one of the most beautiful of British 

 birds, it is one of the bravest and also one of the most 

 useful to man. Plentiful in their numbers, active in 

 their motions, voracious in their appetites, and bold in 

 the extreme, the little blue-caps are among the most 

 indefatigable scavengers in nature. In the spring months 

 they are incessantly at work in the orchards and shrub- 

 beries, and wherever they find a bud with an insect in 

 it they nip it off, fly to a twig, perch by one foot, clutch 

 the bud in the other, pick out the insect, drop the rest, 

 and off again in quest of another. Also, as the season 

 advances, they are just as vigilant in the destruction 

 of the leaf-rolling caterpillars, and appear to know, 



