as
a dozen or more are sometimes found in a nest.

[Illustration: LONG-TAILED TIT.]

The little blue-tit, which has just fled across our path is a very
pretty active bird and common everywhere, in lanes, woods, and
gardens. The blue-tit makes its nest in a wall or a hole in a tree and
lays about nine or ten pretty little spotted eggs. How often I
remember, when I was a boy, to have been bitten rather sharply by this
little bird into whose nest I had placed my hand; I can fancy I hear
the snake-like hissing which the blue-tit utters when some rude hand
invades its home. Its food consists of various kinds of insects and
insect larvae, which it finds on the bark of trees and in fruit buds. I
think it does much good by destroying numbers of injurious insects,
though gardeners and others destroy this bird, because they say it
harms the fruit buds. Look at that little sprightly fellow, how
restless he is; in what curious attitudes he puts himself on yonder
branch. Hark! you hear him tapping quite distinctly. Besides insects,
blue-tit does not object to make a meal of dead mice or rats. Mr. St.
John tells us that a blue-tomtit once took up his abode in the
drawing-room, having been first attracted there by the house flies
which crawl on the window. "These he was most active in searching for
and catching, inserting his little bill into every corner and crevice
and detecting every fly which had escaped the brush of the housemaid."
He soon became more bold and came down to pick up crumbs which the
children placed for him on the table, looking up into Mr. St. John's
face without the least apparent fear. Boys sometimes call the little
blue-tit Billy Biter, no doubt from personal experience of the
sharpness of Mr. Tit's beak. The great tit which we can see under the
yew tree in our garden, almost any hour of the day, is very common in
the neighbourhood, and I dare say if we look well about us during our
walk we shall see some to-day.

"Oh! papa," exclaimed Willy, "there are some birds on the towing-path
of the canal, about sixty yards off; they seem to be breaking
something with their beaks by knocking it against the ground; just
look." Yes, they are thrushes, and I can tell you what they are doing
and what we shall find when we come up to the spot. We shall see
several broken snail shells (_Helix_), which the thrushes find on the
grassy slopes of the canal bank, and then bring up to the path in
order to get at the animals insi