Page:Wild nature won by kindness (IA wildnaturewonbyk00brigiala).pdf/113

 and began by asking what he was to do about "those Blue Tits.""Why, what have they been doing?" I asked."Two of them have been sitting at the entrance of one of the hives, and they have picked off and killed every bee as it came out, and now they have begun upon a second hive.""Well, you had better hang up some potatoes stuck over with feathers, and that will frighten them away.""I've done that, ma'am, and they sit on the potatoes and look at me!" It was a trying case of utter contumacy, and at last I was obliged, for the sake of saving my bees, to let one little victim be shot and hung up as "an awful example" to the rest, and it proved an effectual remedy. My basket of fat used to prove very attractive all through the cold weather, when, I suppose, these tiny birds need the calories it supplies; they always left off coming as soon as the days were warm and insects plentiful.