THE TITMOUSE
“At last we come to some caterpillar-destroyers that are never anything
but helpful. First of all there is the titmouse, also known as the
tomtit.
“It is a graceful little bird, lively and quick-tempered, always on the
go, flying continually from tree to tree, carefully inspecting the
branches, hanging from the tip ends of the slenderest of them in all
sorts of positions, often head downward, swaying this way and that with
its flexible support and never letting go its hold, while it examines
all buds that it suspects of containing worms, and tears these buds to
pieces in order to get at the grubs and insect eggs they contain. It is
calculated that a titmouse consumes three hundred thousand insect eggs
a year, and certainly few birds have larger families to provide for!
Twenty or more little ones all huddled together in the same nest are
not too great a strain on the parent’s energy and industry. The mother
bird has to examine buds and the fissures in the bark of trees in order
to find grubs, spiders, caterpillars, worms of every kind, and feed a
score of beaks always open and demanding food in the bottom of the
nest. She comes with a caterpillar, the brood is all excitement, twenty
mouths fly open, but only one receives the morsel, leaving nineteen
still expectant. Then away flies the titmouse again without an
instant’s pause, to seek more food. Thus back and forth she flies,
without rest and without weariness; and by the time the twentieth mouth
is fed the first one is again open, and has been open a good while,
clamoring for more.
“I will leave you to guess how many worms are eaten in a day by such a
household; and I will also let you reach your own conclusions regarding
the value of these birds as caterpillar-hunters among our fruit-trees.
Complaint is made, I know, that they tear open the buds and destroy
them; but the harm they do is only apparent. When they pluck a bud it
is to get out some tiny larva lodged between two scales, and not to
harm the young leaves or flowers that are forming. It is better that
this wormy bud should perish; it would not have produced anything, and
the enemy lodged within it would have produced countless others to
ravage the tree the next year.”
“Then the titmouse does not feed on vegetable matter?” asked Louis.
“No, except perhaps occasionally on a few seeds, such as those of hemp.
The bird requires animal food; small insects of all kinds, their eggs
and larvæ, suit it best. Its appetite for prey is so keen that it has
the courage to attack little, disabled birds or those caught in snares,
pecking at their skulls and greedily devouring their brains. It is true
that the titmouse is remarkably courageous despite its smallness of
size; it is extremely quick and quarrelsome, and a regular little ogre
in time of famine. Its beak is conical, strong, short, and pointed; and
its claws end in hooked nails designed for seizing their victims, like
the talons of birds of prey. With these the bird grasps its food and
conveys it to its beak, like the parrot.
“At the end of the brooding season the tomtits all assemble in
companies of one or two families each and travel together by short
stages. These companies appear to have a leader, probably the father or
the mother, and every now and then they are called together from one
tree to another, after which they separate again, only to reunite once
more at the leader’s summons. Their flight is short and irregular: they
scatter through the woods, gardens, fields, and orchards, inspecting
trees and bushes on the way and picking up larvæ and insects.
“The titmouse family is made up of many species. We have eight in our
country, but I shall speak only of the principal ones.
“The coal-tit is the largest, being of about the redbreast’s size. It
is bluish gray on the back and yellow underneath. The head is of a
beautiful glossy black, and a wide stripe of the same color runs down
the middle of the chest and stomach and around the eyes, which are also
set off by a large white spot. The large wing-feathers are edged with
ashy blue.
“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.
“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.
“I have had that good fortune,” said his uncle, “and even now I am
strangely moved whenever I think of those twenty little heads
stretching up from the bottom of the nest, trembling and with open
beaks as if their mother had come. I looked for a moment through the
opening of the nest at the tiny creatures, and then withdrew. The
parents were already at hand, ruffling their feathers with anxiety.
Fear nothing, little birds, so watchful of your family; Uncle Paul is
not one to commit the crime of touching your nest.”
“Nor Emile, either,” chimed in the boy.
“Nor yet Jules or Louis,” added the last-named.
“I hope not, indeed; for otherwise Uncle Paul would tell you no more
stories.
“The penduline’s nest is still more remarkable. This titmouse is found
hardly anywhere except along the banks of the lower Rhone. It hangs its
nest very high, from the tip of some swaying tree branch by the
waterside, so that its young are gently rocked by the breeze from the
water. The nest is a sort of oval purse about as large as a quart
bottle and pierced on the side near the top by a narrow opening that
would hardly admit a man’s thumb. To enter its nest the tomtit, small
though it is, must stretch the elastic wall, which yields a little and
then contracts again. This purse-shaped abode is made of the
cotton-like fluff that flies off in May from the ripe catkins of
poplars and willows. The bird gathers this material and then weaves it
together with a warp of wool and hemp. The resulting fabric resembles
the felt of a coarse hat.
“I am at a loss to understand how the bird manages to weave with its
beak and claws a stuff superior to any that the unaided human fingers
could produce; and yet it does this with no instruction, with no
hesitation, and with no hints from the work of others. At its very
first attempt the titmouse puts to shame the studied art of our weavers
and fullers. The top or roof of the nest includes in its structure the
tip of the branch from which it hangs and also the little twigs growing
out of that tip end which serve as a framework for the vault; but the
foliage emerges from the sides of the nest and furnishes shade from the
sun’s heat. Finally, to secure the nest more firmly, cordage of wool
and hemp binds the upper part to the branch and below is worked into
the woof of the felt. The inside is lined with poplar fluff of the best
quality. It takes a pair of pendulines three weeks of the hardest work
to make this marvel.”
“Doesn’t the rain ever get through the covering of the nest?” Emile
inquired.
“No; the felt is so thick and so closely woven that even with the
hardest rain not a drop of water can leak into the cotton-lined
interior.”
“How comfortable the little birds must be in their snug nest! The wind
rocks them gently over the water, and from their little window they can
see the river flowing below. What is this clever penduline like?”
“It is ash-colored, with brown wings and tail, and a black stripe
across the forehead. Its dress is simple, you see, as is always the
case with those that possess real merit. The blue tit has rich plumage,
but when it comes to nest-building it can only pile feathers on top of
one another at the bottom of a tree-hollow. The penduline is of modest
appearance, but it builds the most wonderful nest it is possible to
find. To each his portion, talent or fine clothes.”
“All of us here choose talent,” declared Jules.
“Never, my children,” urged Uncle Paul, “be untrue to that sentiment.”
“We should have to forget your teachings,” the other replied, “before
we could do that.”
“And what are the eggs like?” asked Emile.
“Emile is bound to have all I can tell him about the penduline. Does
this builder of felt nests interest you, then, so very much?”
“Yes, it does,” Emile assured him.
“Well, the eggs are quite white and rather long. There are three or
four of them to a nest.”
“No more than that, when the other tomtits have twenty?”
“No more; but to make up for it there are two layings a year.”