224 
NATURE NOTES. 
shrubbery. And they never seem to diverge from this plan of 
procedure in the smallest degree. The so-called song of the 
greenfinch in the spring is dreary beyond the power of words to 
describe, and resembles nothing so much as that monotonous 
tuneless whistle of the ploughboy, which has been so well said 
to proceed from “ want of thought.’' 
Chaffinches, robins, hedge-sparrows, &c., are numerous at 
this feast ; it is interesting to observe their different modes of 
behaviour. The nuthatches seem to favour the scraps of suet 
quite as much as the nuts. These latter they always attack 
head downwards ; in this position they arrive on the long 
slender top-shoot of the Christmas-tree, let themselves slide 
down into the coco-nut, and then hammer away, chipping out 
large wedges of it. If they chip off a bigger bit than they can 
conveniently swallow, they fly off rvith the morsel to a neigh- 
bouring tree, into the bark of which they poke it firmly, and 
then hammer at it, head downwards still, till it has disappeared. 
I have never seen a nuthatch attempt to fight another bird, but 
for some reason all the tit family — prize-fighters by profession 
though they be — give place to them on the tree at once, and 
without a murmur or remonstrance. 
The cole-tit prefers brazil-nuts to anything, but failing his 
favourite food nothing comes amiss to him. He has a curious, 
and apparently useless habit of carrying off scraps of food and 
sticking them all over the boughs of a cedar near bj-, where they 
naturally fall to the share of the rapacious and lazy sparrow. 
I have seen the cole-tit play this game for half-an-hour at a 
time, much to the delight of Jack Sparrow. The tit never seems 
to revisit any one place again to look for his hoard, if it is 
intended for such. The cole-tit is quite devoid of the sleek and 
natty appearance of the rest of his family, and is a most insignifi- 
cant and untidy pinch of fluff ; but tiny as he is, he possesses 
the family courage and pugnacity in a degree quite dispropor- 
tionate to his size. Apparently he is quite aware of the fact that 
he is too small to have a chance of victory in a stand-up fight 
with an)' other bird, unless it be with his first cousin — the long- 
tailed-tit, or the golden-crested rvren, so he has acquired a knack 
of flinging himself up from the ground, anyhow, into the face of 
any bird threatening a particularly coveted morsel, and in the 
instant of bewilderment which follows this ruse, making off with 
the prize ! The whole tit family possess the power of rising 
equal to any emergency, howeA’er unprecedented. 
friend of mine suspends brazil-nuts by a long string to a 
branch, and I have seen the marsh-tit hauling up the string with 
his bill, and collecting “ the slack ” under one tiny black foot 
as if he had been at the work all his life. The tits rvill also 
hold food in their claws to peck at like hawks and owls, and 
birds of prey generally, but quite ?ndike all other birds of their 
size. 
Coming home the other night, about dusk, a large bird flew 
