BLUB TITMOUSE 97 



Blue Titmouse. 

 Parus caenileus. 



Crown blue encircled with white ; cheeks white bordered with 

 dark blue ; back olive-green ; wings and tail bluish ; greater coverts 

 and secondaries tipped with white ; breast and belly yellow, traversed 

 by a dark blue line. Length, four and a half inches. 



The blue tit is a commoner species than the oxeye, and is even 

 more widely diffused in this country, its range extending from the 

 Channel Islands to the northernmost parts of Scotland, and it has 

 been found as a straggler in the Orkneys and the Shetlands. All 

 the qualities that distinguish the tits and make them such engaging 

 birds are found in a marked degree in the present species — sociability; 

 extreme vivacity, especially in the cold season ; and the power to 

 assume an endless variety of graceful positions when clinging to the 

 slender branches and twigs, upright or pendulous, of the leafless trees 

 in winter. And as the blue tit is more abundant, and more familiar 

 with man, than the others, besides having a gayer colouring, he is 

 the favourite member of his genus. He promises, indeed, to become 

 in time our first feathered favourite ; for though he is without 

 melody, and does not come to us with a glad message, like the 

 swallow, and has no ancient sentiment and nursery literature, like 

 the robin, to help him to the front, he possesses one imfailing attrac- 

 tion — he is an amusing creature. Perhaps our progenitors were 

 less susceptible in that way than we are, and took no notice of 

 the tomtit and his vagaries. In winter he may be easily won with 

 a little food ; and when he joins the mixed company of sparrows, 

 dunnocks, blackbirds, and starlings that come to the door for crumbs 

 and scraps, he is by contrast among them a ' winged jewel ' — a 

 small wanderer from the tropics. In works of ornithology you will 

 find the blue tit described as a Httle acrobat and harlequin, droll 

 and grotesque and fantastic in his ways ; and if this Puck among 

 our feathered fairies can win expressions such as these from the 

 gravest scientific writers, it is not strange that ordinary folk should 

 find Him so fascinating. 



The language of the blue tit resembles that of the oxeye. Its 

 voice is not so powerful, but the various sounds, the caU and love 

 notes, or song, composed of one note repeated several times without 



