FEBRUARY 47 



the lengthening days. On all hands they are tinkering 

 at kettles, and tiny anvils ring under their sounding 

 strokes. The loudest performer is naturally the Great 

 Tit, whose note is said to resemble the sound produced 

 by sharpening a saw with a file, an operation to which, 

 it must be confessed, chance has never given us the 

 opportunity of listening. The Coal Tit reiterates his 

 " sista-weet, sista-weet " ; a like spring-fever seizes 

 the Blue Tit, and amongst the pollard willows by the 

 weir the Marsh Tit is taking his turn as a variety artiste. 

 For an individual tit of any one of these four species 

 will invent some fresh variation and practise it all day 

 long, to forget it completely next morning and hark 

 back to its more familiar note. So much is this the 

 case that anything novel in call-notes incessantly 

 repeated, and especially if having about it the resonance 

 of hammered metal, seldom puzzles us, being at once 

 attributed to the versatile genius of a tit, either large 

 or small. It is true that we have been deceived once 

 or twice into imagining that the chiff-chaff, or the tree 

 pipit had arrived before its time, till a sight of the 

 author proved that it was merely a tit favouring his 

 woodland audience with the latest addition to his 

 repertoire. Thus, many as are the tunes and impossible 

 as it is to remember them in detail, they may usually 

 be recognized by their family likeness and taken together 

 they form a tinkling accompaniment to the minstrelsy 

 of the still leafless woods. 



