BIRDS IN THE GREENWOODS 233 



it seems, a sharp investigatory glance. He then 

 flies away. 



"A nut-hatch, also, I twice see hammering at the 

 cones, in much the same manner as the tit, and, having 

 loosened a thin brown flake from one of them, he flies 

 off with it in his beak. I have not yet seen the tit do 

 this, nor did I ever see him get an insect. If he got 

 anything at all, it must have been in one of the actual 

 blows, become a peck, as when he hammers at a 

 cocoa-nut hung in the garden. The greenfinches 

 never hammered, but only bit and tugged at the clubs 

 of the cones. Brown flakes often fell down from them, 

 but I never saw the birds fly off with these, as the nut- 

 hatch has done. I had seen one with a flake in his 

 bill which, however, he soon let fall to the ground. 



" One of the greenfinches is again attacking the 

 cones, and I can now see the way he does it more 

 plainly. He places his beak between the clubs of the 

 cones at their tips (I mean their outer ends), and then 

 moves his head and beak rapidly, seeming, as it were, 

 to flutter with his head, and as he does this you hear 

 the grating, vibratory sound. All the time, he is cling- 

 ing head downwards to the side of the cone, quite a 

 feat for so large, at least for such a stout-built bird. 

 I will not, however, be quite sure that it is to the cone 

 itself that he clings. The fir-needles hang in bunches 

 near them, and his claws may be fixed amongst these, 

 though I do not think so, or, at least, not always. 

 Besides this sound made with the beak on the fir- 

 cones, there is another, which one often hears, and 

 which is usually, I think, made by the greenfinch. To 

 get at the cones, he often flies up underneath them, 

 and hangs a little, thus, before clinging, on fluttering 



