often to be found there in colonies—they would be all ready to become specialised experts. At least it appears to me so, and I think it the more curious because they do not seem often to practise what they can do so well. Here is my note, taken in October, when, perhaps, there would be a little more scarcity of the ordinary food of such birds, than in the spring and summer of the year.
"In a grove of Scotch firs this morning I noted, first a blue-tit, clinging to the trunk of one in the same manner as a nut-hatch or tree-creeper. Hardly had he flown off it when a wren flew to and commenced to ascend perpendicularly the trunk of a tree quite near me, flying thence to another which it also ascended, and so on from tree to tree. Afterwards, however, I was able to watch blue-tits acting in this manner for some little time, as well as quite closely, and I decided that they were the greater adepts of the two. They climbed the perpendicular or overhanging trunk with ease and swiftness, clinging to the roughnesses of the bark, at which they pecked from time to time, I imagine for insects. Usually they went straight upwards, but sometimes more or less slantingly. I also noted—and this I had not been able to do for certain in the wren—that they descended as well as ascended the trunks of the trees; but here the manner of progressing was not quite so scansorial, for it was with a little flutter. Whether they used the feet as well as the wings in the descent I could not actually see, but they kept quite near enough to the trunk to have done so. These little fluttering drops or drop-runs interested me very much. The bird never made
