afterwards picked up several which were marked with little pits round the base, where it had joined the stalk, difficult to attribute to squirrels, and suggesting that the birds had severed them in this way, and not yet proceeded farther.
If the coal-tit does this, then it seems likely that the great-tit does so also, in which case his extracting the seeds from the larger cones of exotic firs would be only what one might expect. The coal-tit, too, ascends the trunks of trees—Scotch fir-trees especially—in the same fluttering way as does the blue-tit, but perhaps still more deftly, in search of insects, and often, as one watches him, a flake of the bark that he has detached comes fluttering down. The golden-crested wren may do the same, but I have been more struck by the way in which this little bird flies about amidst the pine-trees, from one needle-bunch to another. He hangs from them head downwards, but often, before clinging amongst them, flutters just above or, sometimes, just below them. In the latter case it seems as though the needles were flowers, and that he was probing them with his bill, whilst hanging in the air like a hummingbird; and this, amidst the dark pines and, especially, on a gloomy winter's day, is odd to see. Often he flits down from his pine-needles into the coarse, tufty grass just bounding the plantation, bustles and fairy-fusses there for a little, then is up again amongst his needles, pecking the frost from them. For this is what it looks like, that seems to be the meal he is making, though, surely, it must really be something more substantial—if "meal" and "substantial" are words that can be properly used in respect of a
