Docile Tits
In very many places the tits, especially the great tit, have learned to puncture the cardboard lids of milk containers ; and thereafter to enjoy the creamy surface of the milk. The experience of a dweller in an Oxford cottage will explain, at any rate, how the birds may come to discover what lies within the container. One morning the milkman left a bottle without its lid. On the next morning, and continuously thereafter, the tits, who had never before paid the least attention to the milk, tore the cover to pieces and left a circle of bits all round the bottle. Birds are quick learners. The other day I hung up half a coconut on the balcony of a brand new house. No tits had been noticed about the place and a coconut was probably a novelty in the immediate neigh- bourhood. Yet within a few hours blue tits• and great tits were very busy with the new food,though it has not hadthe good fortune of the milk in the Oxford garden to attract all four varieties of tits ; but then Oxford exerts an exceptional attraction for birds. Almost all wild animals appear to have a wonderful, intelligence system for the discovery of food.; and none excels the grey squirrel, unless it is the rat. Both will discover seductiVe food in closed buildings and cut their way in without de/ay: In one wooden but in a neigh- bouring wood nearly two score of grey squirrelS were caught as they made their way to a supply, of corn through a hole that one of the company had cut. As for the rats, in my own garden they climbed otitside to an upper windoW over a stable, and ate their way , through the sash all for the sake of the Cox's apples stored in trays in the room.
W. Bescu Thous&
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