MARSH TIT. 447 



plants, especially thistles. Its flight is rapid and undulated, 

 all its motions are quick and abrupt, and it creeps along the 

 twigs, flutters, and throws itself into all sorts of positions, just 

 like the other species. Its food consists chiefly of insects, but 

 in autumn and winter it also eats the seeds of various syngenesian 

 and other plants, and will pick at the flesh of a dead animal. 

 It remains all the year with us, and does not seem to shift its 

 quarters much. Its ordinary cry is a shrill cheep, but it also 

 emits a variety of chattering notes, and in spring has a kind of 

 song which may be expressed by the syllables cliicJca^ chicka^ 

 chee. Toward the end of that season, the little flocks disperse, 

 separate from the individuals of the other species with which 

 they have associated in winter, and betake themselves to the 

 dense woods, or the marshy wooded borders of streams and 

 pools, the chief attraction to which seems to be the decayed 

 willows, of which the crevices afford an abundant supply of 

 insect food. 



The nest is generally placed in the hole of a decayed tree, 

 which the bird has enlarged for the purpose, and is composed 

 of moss, wool, hair, and vegetable fibres interwoven, and lined 

 with the seed down of willows and syngenesian plants. The 

 eggs, from five to seven or eight in number, are from seven 

 and a quarter to nearly eight twelfths in length, six twelfths in 

 breadth, oval, and of a white colour, marked all over with 

 small spots and dots of light red. The same anxiety about its 

 eggs or young is manifested by this as by the other species of 

 the genus. It is remarkable that the Tits should be so late in 

 breeding, the young of this and the last species not being gene- 

 rally abroad until the end of July, at which time even nests 

 with eggs have been obtained. 



Montagu states that he has " seen it excavating the decayed 

 part of the willow, carrying the chips in its bill to some dis- 

 tance, always working downwards, making the bottom for the 

 reception of the nest larger than the entrance. The nest is 

 composed of moss and thistledown, sometimes a little wool, 

 and lined with the down of the thistle." " All the species of 

 Tits," he observes, " whose eggs are known, are similar in 

 colour, and only to be distinguished from each other by size 



