SHORT CUTS TO NECTARIES BY BLUE TITS. 417 
Short Cuts to Nectaries by Blue Tits. 
Ву С. Е. М. Swynvertoy, F.L.S. 
(PLATE 33.) 
[Read 18th June, 1914. | 
SINCE writing my paper on “ Short Cuts by Birds to Nectaries” in Africa, 
І have carried out the following observations in Ireland. They seem to 
show clearly that the Blue Tit, at any rate, is a nectar-eater. 
* April, 1914.—In Mr. J. W. Smyth’s garden, Duneira, Larne.. Noticed 
Blue Tits that were searching briskly along the boughs and twigs of some 
Scotch firs, fly down now and then to gooseberry bushes (Ribes Grossularia, 
Linn.) in flower close by, stay there a minute or two only, then at once 
return to their insect-hunting in the Scotch firs. I had no glasses, and was 
unable to distinguish the flowers from where I stood, but the actions of the 
Tits while in the gooseberry bushes were distinctly those of birds that are 
visiting flowers 
* [ then passed on to each of two red-flowering American currant bushes 
(Ribes sanguineum, Pursh), the flowers of which I had previously noticed to 
have had basal perforations and other damage inflicted on them wholesale, 
probably by the agency of birds’ bills, though possibly by Bombus. No birds 
were now present, and none of the torn-off flower-fragments on the ground 
below appeared quite fresh. I returned at interv: als, and at about the. fourth 
visit found a Blue Tit (Parus ceruleus, Linn.) perched in the centre of 
the bush. I came up close under cover of a fir trunk and watched, and he 
almost immediately went on to visit the flowers. Where a raceme hung well 
out, he would sometimes seize its end with both feet and probe the flowers by 
their artificial openings аз he hung there ; but he far more frequently perched 
on the thickest peduncle, or on a ‘neighbouring twig, and, continuing to hold 
this with one foot, stretched out the other (the left one always while I watched) 
and seized with it, as with a hand, the tip of the raceme and drew this in 
towards himself. Then, still holding and steadying it with his foot—hanging 
in fact from both the peduncle and the end of the raceme,—he rapidly applied 
his bill to flower after flower, and at once passed on to another raceme. 
Finally he left. I had been unable to judge whether he actually tore any of 
the flowers I had seen him visit-—in any case very few had not been torn 
already,—but on going up and re- examining the fragments on the ground, 
1 found amongst them two freshly-severed ones that I had at any rate not 
noticed before. 
“TI had, previously to the Тіз visit, carried out a most careful examination 
of the flowers on the bush with a view to ascertaining whether any of them 
