“This bird is very common in copses and gardens, and is the one we hear in autumn repeating, as it examines the bark of fruit-trees, its cry of titipoo, titipoo, titipoo. At times this cry has a harsh sound like the rasping of a file, and this has given to the bird, in some neighborhoods, the name of locksmith. It nests in a hollow tree trunk, lining its quarters with some soft, silky material, chiefly fine feathers. Its laying consists of about fifteen white eggs spotted with light red, especially toward the large end. Its family demands not fewer than three hundred caterpillars a day, or their equivalent in vermin of some sort. What the gardener, the nurseryman, and the forester owe this valiant caterpillar-destroyer by the end of the year cannot be calculated. Yet I have seen these very persons angrily thrust an arm into the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree to pull out the coal-tit’s nest and throw the whole thing to the winds,—eggs, feathers, and little birds only a day old. And they thought they were doing something worthy of praise, for according to them the coal-tit eats buds. But I declare that the coal-tit does not eat buds; it eats the little larvæ lodged in the bud’s scales, and its instinct never allows it to molest healthy buds, which contain nothing of any value to the bird. Leave it in peace, then, to pluck the wormy buds, which it can very easily tell from the sound ones. “The coal-tit sometimes eats hemp-seed or hazelnuts, picking out the edible part with a dexterity of beak and claw—I had almost said hand—possessed by no other bird. The sparrow, chaffinch, goldfinch, and others crush the hemp-seed between their mandibles; the coal-tit grasps it in its claw, carries it to the beak, and makes in the shell a small round opening through which it picks out the meat. The hazelnut is managed with the same skill.