July, when the joys and cares of family life were over, there was more deliberation and less shyness. I was able to watch the bird easily and for a long time together. In May he was restless and very wary, and it was with difficulty I could get a glimpse of him. He was always on the move, hunting about in the tops of the trees, and, I thought, singing in competition with the willow-wrens.

The blackcap is often placed next to the nightingale as a songster, but there is a very wide interval between them. The most inattentive listener can hardly fail to notice a nightingale's song, but people who are not accustomed to distinguish the different notes of birds are often quite unaware of the presence of a singing blackcap, as the tone of his song mingles with the general chorus.

Golden-crested wrens are not uncommon in winter, but I have never found a nest here. I notice them most often in October and November, as they are hunting in and out the yews and Scotch firs, sometimes a large party, sometimes only a single pair.

One June day I was sitting in a cousin's garden in Wales, when out of an arbor-vitæ close by appeared a dilapidated-looking gold-crest, which set to work violently and persistently to abuse me. Herein, I think, like the whitethroat mentioned before, it displayed either a perversion of instinct or a want of sense. If it had only kept quiet I should not have thought of a nest, but it told me so plainly that it had one in that very tree that I looked as a matter of course and found it, packed with fully-fledged young ones.

Chiffchaffs never stay with us, though they are to be found only a few miles away, but I sometimes see them and hear their well-known note in spring and autumn for a day or two.

Willow-warblers abound ("Peggy whitethroat" is the Cheshire name), and it is a delight to catch for the first time each spring their lovely little song, of which, unlike the wearisome iteration of the chiffchaff, one never tires. The American naturalist, John Burroughs, describes the willow-warbler's strain as the most melodious he heard in England, and the only one exhibiting the best qualities of American songsters. He adds: "It is too fine for the ordinary English ear!" As if on a visit of a few weeks to a strange country he could possibly know what most English people either thought or liked!

Willow-wrens as a rule keep pretty high up in the trees, but one sometimes sees them on the grass picking up flies or flying up after them in the air. Later on in summer they hunt for insects in the kitchen garden, and are often to be seen running up and down the pea-sticks.

Though silent in July, they sing again after the middle of August. I have known a willow-wren's nest here in the middle of a roughish piece of ground that was continually walked over, about as unprotected position as you could wish, and yet the young were successfully reared. I have seen a willow-wren attack and drive away a perfectly inoffensive marsh-tit that happened to alight near it on the grass.

The wood-wren, with its "sibilous shivering note," I have heard at Budworth, a few miles away, but never in this garden or immediate neighbourhood.

The garden-warbler, too, is quite a stranger, and I have never recognised it in these parts at all. In May, 1900, I saw and heard one for several days in a garden in North Wales, where it is generally supposed to be unknown.

Sedge-warblers sing incessantly when first they come, but after they have been here for a little while are much less frequently heard. They usually are hidden in the depths of a bush when singing, but I have seen one pouring out its impetuous song mounted on a telephone wire in the open, 20 feet from the ground, and another that sang as it was flying. For several years a sedge-warbler has begun to sing again here in July, not having been heard for some weeks previously. In 1907, for example, from July 24th to August 2nd, he could, without much exaggeration, be said to have sung all day and all night. I heard him at seven in the morning when I got up and at twelve at night when I went to bed, and I have a note of much the same thing in 1910, about the same date. The bird that year chose as his special platform the lower branches of a sycamore, and would every now and then fly off into the air singing all the while at the very top of his voice, and then return to the tree to sing again.

Hedgesparrows are common enough all the year round, and are great favourites of mine. They are elegant birds in their modest way, they are unobtrusive and useful, and their song, if not brilliant, is pleasant, and like that of the wren and the robin, it helps to cheer the dull winter months when the more famous warblers are away enjoying the warmth of some sunny southern country.

There is no month in the year in which at one time or another I have not heard the hedge-sparrow's song, but March is the time of all others to hear it, then it seems impossible to get away from it at any hour of the day.

Hedgesparrows creep about in a mouse-like fashion peculiar to themselves, with a series of little running jumps, and the continual shuffling or flipping movement of their wings is very noticeable.

They will take their share of the fowls' food with other birds, and will come all round the food-stand and pick up the minutest morsels of something on the ground, but (except in the case of a bird in the cold weather of January, 1902), I have never seen one make an attempt to get at the food on the stand itself.

Sometimes on first turning out on a dark winter's morning, between seven and eight, hedgesparrows will be squatting on the path, and will almost let you walk over them before they get out of your way.

V.

Tits and Wrens.

Only once, in August, 1904, have I caught sight of a party of long-tailed tits in the garden, but a friend who lived hardly a mile away used to tell me that little parties of eight or nine might be seen flying through his orchard nearly every winter. I think he said they called them "churns," or something that sounded like that.

Great-tits are common the whole year round; and very handsome they look when their suits of velvet-black and yellow are at their best. They are constant visitors to the food-stand, and are not baffled by any contrivance for excluding sparrows, but they are not so plucky or so clever at it as tom-tits. They are hectoring, full of bustle and importance, and make themselves generally disagreeable to other birds, but I have seldom, if ever, seen one great-tit attack another. Sometimes one sees a pair of the quietest possible character; on the most affectionate terms with one another they will come to the stand together and appear perfectly oblivious of the presence there of any other birds.

It is not at all uncommon to see a great-tit with a crooked tail, slightly sickle-shaped. It cannot always be the same bird, for it is 16 years since I first noticed a bird with such a tail, and nearly every year still (1912) I see one.

One may often hear a tapping sound in trees and shrubs that is made by a great-tit, and I have watched the bird after considerable tapping draw out a grub of some sort from under the bark. I noticed on another occasion that a tit in making this tapping noise was beating something (through the glass it looked like a beetle) which it held in its beak against a bough of the tree.

Like tom-tits, great-tits will fly off with grains of Indian corn, and, like coal-tits, they are fond of sunflower seeds. (In spite of