Page:Wild nature won by kindness (IA wildnaturewonbyk00brigiala).pdf/109

 bay for a time. At length a twittering scrimmage ensued, and the combatants disappeared. I once coaxed a Blue Tit to live in the dining-room for a few days, and he made himself very happy, constantly flitting about in search of insects, running up and down the curtains like a veritable mouse, alighting on any joint of cold meat which happened to be on the sideboard, and making an excellent dinner in Bohemian fashion. Of course his fearless curiosity led him into difficulties. He would sit on the edge of a jug and peer down to see what it might contain, and his plumage was not improved by the baths of milk or cocoa which he met with in the pursuit of knowledge of this kind. Some years ago an empty cocoa-husk with a hole at one end, furnished with nesting materials, was hung up just above the basket of fat. A large tit began to build in it, but unhappily for him a Blue Tit had also been house-hunting, and determined to settle in it. I saw the matter decided by a pitched battle between the two; they fought desperately, rolling over and over on the lawn, pecking, chirping, beating each other with their wings, like little feathered furies as they were.