It is not at all uncommon to see a great-tit with a crooked tail, slightly sickle-shaped. It cannot always be the same bird, for it is 16 years since I first noticed a bird with such a tail, and nearly every year still (1912) I see one.
One may often hear a tapping sound in trees and shrubs that is made by a great-tit, and I have watched the bird after considerable tapping draw out a grub of some sort from under the bark. I noticed on another occasion that a tit in making this tapping noise was beating something (through the glass it looked like a beetle) which it held in its beak against a bough of the tree.
Like tom-tits, great-tits will fly off with grains of Indian corn, and, like coal-tits, they are fond of sunflower seeds. (In spite of what Gilbert White says, I have never seen tom-tits here touch sunflower seeds.)
A great-tit has a note very much like the "pink, pink" of a chaffinch, which he occasionally uses.
Though great-tits are, no doubt, handsome birds, they are not nearly so interesting in my opinion as either of the other three common kinds of tit. None of them, indeed, can really compare in interest with that audacious little villain, the tom-tit, or blue-tit, or, as he is called here, blue-cap. He is so full of spirits, so resolute and domineering, I delight to hear his cheery little song, if it is to be called a song.
Sundial in Old Church Yard.
Tom-tits in abundance come to the food-stand, which in the first instance was specially intended for their benefit. They will come more or less the whole year through if the food is left there, but, of course, many more in winter than in summer, and most of all in February and the beginning of March, when I have counted twelve on the stand at once, but the numbers fall off very quickly towards the middle of March.