THE. BARE WOOD
With nothing to do but stand and stare one notices that when the leaves have gone from the trees in a copse or wood the larger birds generally forsake these places. The crow may perch for a short time, but a bare wood is a draughty place, and the bigger trees serve only as an occasional look-out for crow, magpie, hawk or other predator. The inhabitants of the bare wood by day are parties of lesser birds, insect-eaters that search the bark of trees, clearing away the eggs of pests that would otherwise live to maim the growth, causing deformities and cankers that would in turn give shelter to moulds and such things. The tits take care of this work, moving endlessly over the trees, missing nothing from a mite to a skulking spider. At the approach of night the tits and their kind leave for shelter in more friendly places, a holly tree or the holes and cracks in an old stone wall, roosts that are safe and to which few enemies can penetrate.
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