214 Orchard Aisles 



parties of long-tailed tits, which, at every time of 

 year except the height of the breeding season, 

 are to be seen bobbing across the country, from 

 hedge to hedge and copse to copse, with their soft, 

 pied plumage and confidential cries. The long- 

 tailed tit seldom sets its domed and lichened nest 

 among the boughs of the apple-trees, though it 

 sometimes chooses the thorny orchard hedge ; but 

 the deep holes where the trees have lost a limb in 

 former years are inhabited for many years in succes- 

 sion by the tits of other kinds. When alarmed while 

 sitting on the nest, they cling resolutely to their 

 post, and utter a hissing sound which often mystifies 

 or alarms the human intruder. Another species 

 which nests in the same holes in the apple-trees, and 

 is often ousted from them by that war-like cannibal, 

 the great tit, is the curious and beautiful wryneck, 

 which fills the orchard with its repeated cry when 

 it arrives from the south in the first hot days of 

 April. The wryneck is a famous hisser when brought 

 to bay in its nesting cavern ; and, from this habit, 

 combined with the writhing motions of its head and 

 neck, it is called in many parts of the country the 

 snake-bird. 



For nearly two months before the first shouting of 

 the hidden wryneck is heard among the elms in the 

 hedgerows, new life has been brought to the orchard 

 boughs by the song of the mating chaffinch. The 

 chaffinch seldom begins to nest until the latter days 

 of April, when the missel-thrush's eggs in the main 

 forks of the apple trees are already often hatched. 

 But as soon as the thrill of spring is felt in the 



