Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/307

Rh a comfortably filled vest, then rushes up a spruce with rattling of bark, flicks its tail half a dozen times in defiance, and anon nibbles as it watches us with black eyes and mobile nose. Now the low piping of hidden bullfinches is heard, and a distant jay squalls an obtrusive advertisement of his presence. But suddenly, a moment later, the trees are alive with small birds. A whole party of long-tailed tits is jerking with short, restless flights from branch to branch. Coal tits and blue-tits perform acrobatic feats on the finer twigs. Several goldcrests are of the company, while two or three tree-creepers devote their attention to the trunks and larger limbs, always beginning to investigate a tree at its base and dodging artfully to keep branch or stem between themselves and the observer. In a few minutes all have passed on and the wood seems more silent than before. Whether pure sociability or a feeling that there is safety in numbers is the motive which leads to these associations we cannot say, but they are constantly to be met with, and the units of which the foraging party is composed are almost always the same. Possibly a nuthatch may make one of the coterie, creeping about the oak-boles, head downwards as usual, or bolder movements and a stronger note than those of the small fry betray the great-tit.

On a dull day when the light is bad, any trick of manner or movement is a help towards identifying