NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 199
the plan advocated in the following note in "Peter Lombard's" admirable
column? in "The Church Times." The writer says : "I have found that a coco-
nut sawn in half and hung in a tree is an unfailing source of amusement to the
various 'tits' in hard weather. I always hang one in a tree just outside my
nursery window, and thus provide pleasure both inside and outside the house.
Last winter, I think, altogether we put out three coconuts, which were cleaned
out as, if they had been scraped with a knife. We used to have a constant succes-
sion of tits, ox-eyes, torn tits, blue-tits, coletits, and when the weather was very
hard we had long tail-tits, and a pretty little grey bird with a black head, which
I suppose was a stone-chat [probably the marsh-tit]. The robins were not above
having a taste when the supply of bread, bacon, and porridge, which I used to put
out, was finished. I found thrushes and blackbirds used to eat the porridge while
it was warm, but very soon it used to get frozen quite hard. Bones hung up in a
tree are very attractive to tits, but I think they preferred the coconut. I saw one
end off, make a hole with a hot wire, and thread a piece of string through the hole
and fasten it to the top of a thorn tree. I have already put one out, and it was
visited yesterday by a blue-tit. They take a day or two to gain courage to settle
on it, but when once they get used to it it is rarely without an occupant."
A "Hedge Priest" writes to a subsequent issue: "What would your corre-
spondent about the tits think of a coconut in constant occupation, and lasting
no longer than a week ? I always have one suspended by a string from a yew
tree just outside ray dining-room window,
and in hard weather not only is it incessantly
tenanted, but sometimes three or four other
tits are hanging on the string waiting their
turn, and though the coconut spins round at a
rapid pace, it does not seem in the least to
diminish their appetite for breakfast. One
little rascal turns another out in rapid succes-
sion, only to be chucked out by another whose
impatience gets the mastery over his manners.
Close by the yew tree a couple of large stakes
are driven into the lawn, upon each of which
is suspended a common soap-box containing a
handful of maize, and the bustle and scurry
can only be likened to a railway station on a
Bank Holiday, as tits of all kinds come and
go in their eagerness to carry off the largest
grains, while humble sparrows, quite depressed
in spirits as they watch the fuss, hop about on
the grass waiting for bits to be dropped.
" My most frequent visitants are the ox-eye
(called by my little girl Mr. Gladstone,' on
account of his big white collar), the blue-tit,
the marsh-tit, and the coletit, and very
occasionally a rarer kind comes also. I
had a third soap-box, which gives great
amusement, filled with Barcelona nuts for the nut-hatches, which they split
with one dab of their bill in the most ingenious manner. I put a Brazil
nut in amongst the small ones the other day, but they would have nothing