About sixty boys pass noisily to and fro through this gateway during play-hours, but the wise parents think they know better than to feed them in the sight of these. All is done during school time and early in the morning.
A friend tells me that he knows of a Blue-Tit’s nest in an exactly similar position. When the bird was sitting he kicked the bottom of the iron post, and put his finger in the hole. Up flew the bold little creature, hissing like a snake, and bit vigorously at it, fully justifying her rural nickname of Billy-biter.
I am glad to think that some of my schoolboy neighbours will read this, and will know that their forbearance towards these little birds is appreciated: a forbearance towards the defenceless which is always a distinguishing characteristic of the true gentleman.
The Blue-Tit is of great service to all flower and fruit growers, and it comes much to our suburban, and even London gardens. And yet gardeners at one time persecuted the little labourer, one of the prettiest and most winsome of our common birds.
Sitting in the garden of a house I formerly lived in, I noted there, in my apple trees laden with fruit, that the Tits—the Great, the Marsh, the Coal, and the Blue-Tit—that had not been much in evidence since April, when they were busy amongst the blossom buds, have come back, and they were busy now again amid the branches. Having read lately that they destroy the fruit, notably apples, in the autumn, I have watched them closely. It is as I expected: a number of the apples have been attacked by insects, and it is on these that the birds are busy, on fruit which if they did remain on the trees—they are now falling in numbers—would be quite worthless. The Tits enlarge the holes so as to get at the true destroyers, and they are doing more good than harm. As the Rev. F. O. Morris said, long ago, “the destruction of the Blue-tit by the farmer or gardener is an act of economical suicide.”
Tits will also sometimes have recourse to the orchard in times of drought, in order to quench their thirst by bites at the fruit. But we should be churlish indeed if we grudged our little unpaid labourers a small tithe of our harvest, which is the larger for their spring services.
The Golden-Crested Wren.
(Regulus cristatus.)
This is the very smallest of our British birds, and indeed of all European species. It is found generally throughout Great Britain, and it has increased in the north greatly of late years owing to the greater cultivation of larch and fir-trees. The numbers of these Wrens are augmented often in autumn by great flocks that come to our eastern coast from the Continent. A migration wave of this sort, Mr. Howard Saunders told of, which lasted 92 days, and reached from the Channel to the Faroe Islands. Another migration in 1883 lasted 82 days, and one, the following year, 87 days. On such occasions bushes in gardens on the coast are covered with birds as with a swarm of bees; crowds flutter round the lighthouse lanterns, and often come to grief there, and weary little travellers climb about the rigging of fishing-smacks in the North Sea.
The Golden-Crested Wren is even smaller than the Common Wren, but its feathers are more flossy. It has on its crown a tongue-shaped patch of warm saffron yellow edged with black. The whole of the rest of its coat is of a plain greenish gray, which is lighter on the under parts of his body. The colour of the wings is also sober, the feathers having a lighter edge; the little beak is thin and pointed, the legs nearly black. The cunningly built nest is placed in the fir-trees where it can with difficulty be discovered. The eggs, which number six, occasionally eleven—of the size of peas—are reddish speckled with a darker shade of the same colour. This useful little bird, always active, hopping unweariedly about seeking food, lives exclusively on insects and grubs. Its dwelling is among pines and fir-trees; it often associates with the Tits, its call is “Sit, sit, sit.”
It is not rare, and is worth its weight in gold.