Wood pigeons are regular in their attendance, when other food is scarce. Oh, certainly, I know all that is to be said on the subject of encouraging wood pigeons! But—have you ever studied the peacock and wine-colour gleam on their necks, when unsmirched by smoke or grime? If so, you will understand my admiration for them. And, in any case, ours isn’t a farming area; there is no corn here for them to squander, and although they sigh all summer long, in the fir trees, “Take _two_ pears, Tommy! Take _two_ pears, Tommy!—_do!_” there are very few pears available that Tommy would even look at; most that grow in the orchards around are the harsh, bitter variety, used for making the drink known as “perry” (the pear equivalent of apple cider). The wood pigeons have helped me back to health and strength many a time, with their soft crooning in the larches, and their quiet talk of things above the petty strife and noisy clamour of the struggling market place. Therefore, I don’t say them nay, in times of plenty, if I have a little to spare, and they chance to need it. * * * * * Of all the bird family, however, I think the coal-tits are our favourites—and there are _such_ a quantity of them. Coal-tits always abound in the neighbourhood of larch woods and birches, which accounts for the numbers that dart about my garden; there are birch woods lower down the hill below the cottage, as well as the larch woods up above; and both birch and larch cluster thick down one side of the house to shield it from the cold winds. Though the coal-tit is not brightly-coloured, like its relations, there is something very delightful about his soft grey garb, and his black head with its light grey or nearly white streak down the back. Like the robin, he always looks well-tailored, not a feather out of place, not a draggled filament anywhere. And he is so extraordinarily alert; he doesn’t seem to give himself time to fly, he darts and dives and flits all over the place, and seems to have an appetite proportionately equal to that of the proverbial alderman. Down he dives the minute the food appears. He stands very erect on his slim little legs (no squatting down on his breast bone, as the sparrows and even the chaffinches often do); he cocks his head from side to side, promptly decides on the largest lump of fat he can find; seizes it, and flies up into a big fir tree, where, apparently, he bolts the whole lump instantaneously! At any rate, before you have time to see where he alighted, down he dives, seizes another big piece, and off he goes again. He seems to eat twice his own size in suet in a few minutes! But I conclude he must drop some of it, though I’ve never been able to prove it. And the theory of a nestful of hungry beaks doesn’t always explain his voraciousness; for he disposes of just as much in the winter as in nesting time.