A Tame Tit In a Sussex garden, which is a
little Paradise for birds, lives a great tit that has attained to unusual courage or friend- liness. A daily exhibition is given of a particular act of friendly courage. The owner of the garden takes from his pocket a metal matchbox, first loosening but never opening the lid. The tit flies to him, perches on his hand and jerks up the lid with his beak ; and then gets to work on the bits of nutty food that the box always contains. It does not matter to the tit whether the meal is taken indoors or out. Sometimes the owner of the matchbox pretends to be asleep on his sofa ; and on such occasions the tit will perch on his head, and if his apparent sleep is unbroken tweak his hair. At present the tit is so busy with domestic arrangements that the event is rather rarer than usual, but the bird has not lost his tameness. In the same neighbourhood the oole-tit seems to be the com- monest species. Seven or eight will descend at a time to a tray of nuts put on the sill of a bedroom window. They are both numerous and bellicose. Even the greenfinches, which also are numerous, have small chance of "securing a meal when the cole-tits are in possession. The neighbourhood is said (in one text-book) to be the favourite haunt of the willow tit, but I could find no evidence that the species had ever been observed thereabouts. It is, of course, not very easy to distinguish froin the marsh tit.
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