The Bush-Tits 
Best of all, perhaps, are the shining rows of eggs they find. Now a 
moth’s egg isn’t as big as a hen’s egg, even to a Bush-Tit, but if you 
were to find forty dozen Hummingbirds’ eggs all in one spot, I guess 
you’d think you were in for a square meal. So the Bush-Tits have 
merry hunting and high living. 
The best part of it all is that these little Bush-Tits are the garden¬ 
er’s best friends; and that means, of course, that the birds are our best 
friends too. If it wer’n’t for these birds, and others like them, I don’t 
know what we’d do for something to eat. The gardener can catch the 
rats and the gophers and the squirrels, and he can chase away the 
rabbits, but he never could see to catch the sneaking little bugs, and 
he couldn’t find the moths’ eggs, not even forty dozen at once; and if 
he didn’t, or if somebody didn’t, the eggs would hatch out worms, and 
the worms would eat our peaches and our apples and our cabbage and 
our corn, until we wouldn’t have much of anything left. So who says 
that the merry little Bush-Tit with his tiny, beady eyes and his great 
big appetite isn’t our best friend? 
But if you think that’s all a Bush-Tit is good for, just to eat bugs 
and moth eggs, you’ll have to guess again. The Bush-Tit is an 
architect. What? Yes, an architect. That’s a person who builds 
houses, you know. And the Bush-Tits build the most beautiful bird 
houses. No, I don’t mean houses made for birds, I mean houses 
made by birds—the most beautiful bird houses that there are in the 
world, I guess. To be sure, they look like pockets, these Tit-houses, 
like fat, round pockets, hung up by the tops in trees, and with, oh, 
such a tiny, round hole in the side to get in at. The hole is big 
enough for the bird to get in, and it wasn’t meant for prying fingers, 
nor yet for the Jays’ snooping beaks. But if we could look into one 
of these pocket-houses, we’d find six or eight tiny white eggs, like 
pearls; and we’d find them resting on a cushion of the softest down—- 
cotton and flower blossoms and spider webs, and anything else that 
is soft. 
And this pocket-house is as beautiful outside as it is inside, for 
the birds never tire of bringing in anything that pleases their fancy—- 
a white spider cocoon, an acacia blossom, or a moth’s wing—and 
hanging it up outside for an ornament. Why, some of these beauty- 
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