ORDER PASSERES. 213 



and produces abundant sport to the fowler, for a single 

 individual can take them all. There are many traits of 

 conformity in their manners and disposition with those of the 

 crows, shrikes, and pies ; they have the same appetite for 

 flesh, and the same custom of tearing their food in pieces 

 to eat it. 



These birds being of a lively and active character, are 

 incessantly in motion ; they are continually fluttering from 

 tree to tree, hopping from branch to branch, climbing up the 

 trunk, crooking themselves to walls, and suspending them- 

 selves in all fashions, sometimes with the head downwards. 

 Though fierce, they are social, seek out the company of their 

 own species, and form little flocks, more or less numerous ; 

 and if any accident should separate them, they recal each 

 other mutually, and are soon reunited. They then seek their 

 food in common, visit the clefts of rocks and walls, and tear 

 with their bills the lichens and the moss of trees, to find insects 

 or their eggs. They also feed on seeds ; but though in many 

 species the bill is strong enough, they do not break them, like 

 the bullfinches and linnets ; they place them under their claws, 

 and pierce them with their bills, like the nuthatches, with 

 which they are sometimes seen to associate during the winter. 

 If a nut be suspended at the end of a string, they will hook 

 themselves to it, and follow all its oscillations without letting 

 go, and keep incessantly picking at it. Such manoeuvres 

 indicate much strength in the muscles ; it has accordingly 

 been observed that the bill is moved by very robust and 

 vigorous muscles and ligaments, as well as the neck, and that 

 the cranium is remarkably thick. They will eat not only 

 grains, but insects, as above hinted, and butterfly-eggs, and 

 peck the growing buds. The largest species (the great 

 titmouse) joins to its other aliments bees, and even little 

 birds, if it finds them enfeebled by illness, or entangled in 

 snares, but it usually eats only the head. 



Almost all the species of titmice are very productive, even 



