“The blue tit is a beautiful little bird that keeps company with the coal-tit and frequents orchards. It is olive-colored above and yellow underneath, with the top of the head an azure blue, the forehead white, and the cheeks white framed in black. A little collar of black also encircles the back and sides of the neck. The large feathers of the tail and wings are edged with blue. This titmouse, so elegant in plumage, so graceful in its bearing, always running about over the bark of tree trunks and around the branches, always hanging from the flexible boughs, and always pecking and searching, is no whit inferior to the coal-tit in its talent for catching caterpillars. It has been seen in a few hours to clear a rosebush of two thousand plant-lice. Caterpillars and the eggs of insects, especially of those that attack fruit, are its chief food. It is very fond of little birds’ brains, but if need be can get along with hemp-seed. Like the coal-tit, it nests in a hollow tree trunk, its nest being nothing but a heap of small feathers. No other species raises a larger family. The eggs are more than twenty in number, white with reddish spots, especially at the large end. “Two other tomtits, of less value as caterpillar-destroyers, build their nests with much art. They are the long-tailed titmouse and the penduline. “The first of these is different from all other tomtits in the length of its tail, which forms more than half the length of the body. This bird lives in the woods during the summer and visits our gardens and orchards only in the winter. It is a small bird, scarcely bigger than a wren, reddish gray on the back and white underneath, with a tinge of red on the stomach and with white nape and cheeks. “The nest is occasionally built in the fork of some branch in bush or hedge, a few feet from the ground, but oftener it is attached to the trunk of a willow or a poplar. Its shape is that of an elongated oval or, rather, an enormous cocoon enlarged at the base, with an entrance on the side about an inch from the top. The outside is made of lichens such as grow on old tree trunks, having thus the appearance of bark and deceiving the casual observer. Filaments of wool bind the whole compactly together. The dome or roof, ingeniously contrived for shedding rain, is a thick felt of moss and cobweb. The inside is like an oven with a bowl-shaped bottom and high arched top. Its shape and the thick layer of soft feathers lining it make the nest warm and cozy. From sixteen to twenty young birds are packed into the narrow space, which does not exceed the hollow of the hand. By what miracle of orderly arrangement do these twenty little creatures and their mother manage to find room for themselves in this tiny abode, and how can tails of such length develop there? It would be impossible to find anywhere a more economical use of space.” “How I should like to see the twenty little tomtits snuggling together in that tiny nest!” Emile exclaimed.