FLORA & FAUNA: Coconuts & Sausage Meat

FLORA & FAUNA

For several months now, Britain's normally demure blue tits have been on a rampage, swooping into respectable houses to tear wallpaper from the walls, attacking milk wagons to guzzle the milk, mangling books and belaboring laundry hung out to dry. This sudden delinquency has caused a flurry of speculation in the Times letters column and other British forums. Some blamed the tits' behavior on the lack of fats in austere Britain; others, like famed Dr. Marie (Married Love) Stopes, on the birds' "unsatisfied passion for coconuts."

(Like its U.S. cousin, the chickadee, Britain's tit has been taught to relish...