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our Titmice in the woods and parks, where it builds in holes of trees, but also makes use of other 
suitable places, such as holes in walls, building a nest like Parus major, but with less moss and 
more feathers. It sits very close; and I once on Bornholm took away a stone in a wall above its 
nest, sent the bird off, and counted its thirteen eggs, let it return again, and then replaced the 
stone, without the bird forsaking her home. A few days after, I poked in a straw, and she only 
grumbled, uttering a harsh note. On the 9th of May 1869, at Dyrehaven, I took eleven eggs 
out of a nest, and on the 11th of June I found young birds in the same nest. It lays more than 
one egg per diem; for when collecting with my friends Erichsen, Theobald, and Fischer on the 
12th of May 1868, we found a nest containing one egg, and on the 18th of May we again examined 
it and found it to contain ten eggs; thus it had laid ten eggs in seven days. 
“As before stated, I found a nest on Bornholm with thirteen eggs; but here at Dyrehaven 
they generally lay from eight to eleven; and in a full sitting, some are partially incubated.” 
The Blue Titmouse is chiefly, nay almost entirely, insectivorous, and, instead of being 
included amongst the victims of members of sparrow-clubs, as is too often the case, should enjoy 
total immunity; for few birds are more useful in ridding the garden of insect pests. Respecting 
the nature of its food the well-known naturalist, Mr. F. Bond, sends us the following note :— 
** According to my experience, the Blue Titmouse feeds its young very much with small larve of 
the gooseberry-moth (Abraxas grossulariata), as also of the winter moth (Cheimatobia brumata), 
Aphides, and other insects; in the autumn I have known it to damage ripe pears by pecking 
round the stalks. Late in the autumn and in the winter it feeds largely on the eggs of insects, 
spiders, &c. &c. I have seen it in company with the Great Titmouse, Coal Titmouse, and 
sometimes the Marsh-Titmouse picking off the loose bark from felled elm trees in search of the 
grub or larve of the elm-beetle (Scolytus destructor) and other wood-boring insects. I do not 
know for certain that they feed on the young larve of the yellow-tailed moth (Porthesia chry- 
sorrhea), but believe such to be the case. ‘They are, as I dare say you know, fond of picking a 
bone. arly in the spring they seem very fond of searching for food among the grass under 
hedges. I have also seen this species, as well as the Coal and Marsh Titmice, very busy extracting 
the fat maggot from the round galls that are now so common on stunted oak-trees.” To give 
some idea of the usefulness of this pretty little Titmouse, we quote the following observations 
communicated by Mr. Weir to Macgillivray’s ‘British Birds ’:—‘‘On Tuesday morning, the 
4th of July 1837, at a quarter past two o’clock, I went out to observe the Titmice feeding their 
brood. It was a most delightful and calm summer morning. It is then, and only then, that we 
can form any conception of our British songsters; for then only they pour forth their notes with 
redoubled vigour. With their melody the whole air seemed to resound. About a quarter past 
four o’clock this music, so enchanting, gradually died away, and all was again mute. In life, 
however, our pleasures are often intermixed with pain; for the midges, those poisonous little 
insects, gave me much annoyance. At half-past three o’clock in the morning the birds began 
to feed their young, which were six in number. From that time until four o’clock they fed 
them twelve times, and from four to five o’clock twenty-five times ; from five to six o’clock they 
fed them forty times, which was astonishing, as, during the whole of this hour, they flew to a 
plantation at the distance of more than one hundred and fifty yards from their nest; from six to 
seven o'clock they fed them twenty-nine times. During a part of this hour they flew in every 
