Orchard Aisles 213 



birds, though the stalwart missel-thrush begins 

 equally early to fling his music to the winds from 

 some buffeted bough. As soon as he begins to nest, 

 which may be early in March, the missel-thrush 

 becomes one of the most frequent colonists of the 

 orchard ; but while he is absorbed only in song, he 

 prefers, as a rule, some more commanding perch 

 than the trees of the orchard can provide. The 

 great tit's fondness for the apple and pear tree is 

 shared by most of the commoner members of his 

 tribe. The blue tit's vivid head is seen gleaming 

 among the lichened boughs almost as often as the 

 great tit's breast of yellowish green ; and of all 

 midwinter scenes in the orchard none recurs more 

 naturally to the mind than the marsh tits and cole 

 tits searching the grey twigs in a thousand acrobatic 

 postures above the frosted grass. It is among the 

 bare boughs of the winter fruit-trees that the differ- 

 ence in plumage between the two closely similar 

 birds can be most easily learnt ; for when they are 

 restlessly twitching through summerfoliage there are 

 fewer opportunities of noticing how the marsh tit 

 wears a complete black cap above his suit of clean 

 grey, while the cole tit's cap is parted lengthways 

 by a paler streak. 



Cole, blue, and great tits, and less frequently the 

 marsh tit also, find in the numerous holes and fis- 

 sures in old apple and pear trees many admirable 

 nesting-places. But in whiter and early spring they 

 also haunt the trees for the insect life to be found lurk- 

 ing abundantly on the lichened and scaly boughs; and 

 in this quest for food they are often joined by the 



