158 The Bluk-Tit. 



Family— PARID.^. 



The Blue-Tit. 



Pnrus cccrulcus, LiNN. 



4 4 1~^ISTRIBUTED over the whole of temperate and Southern Europe, as far 



I J east as the Ural Mountains and the Caucasus. In Norwa}', owing to 

 the comparative mildness of the climate, it is found as far north as 

 lat. 64° ; but in Russia it has not 3-et been obtained further north than lat. 61°. " 

 — Seebohm. 



Pretty generally distributed in Great Britain, but rare and local in the north- 

 west of Scotland, not recorded from the Hebrides, and in the Orkneys and Shetlands 

 only a chance visitor. 



The Blue-Tit is one of the most beautiful of our small birds ; it has the 

 crown of the head smalt-blue, completely encircled by a white stripe, commencing 

 on the forehead, passing over each eye, and into a bracket-shaped line across the 

 back of the head ; behind the latter, at back of head, is a belt of indigo which 

 widens at the sides of the neck and divides, its upper ramus passing through the 

 eye to the base of the bill and the lower forming a belt round the sides of the 

 neck, and uniting with a triangular black patch which occupies the throat and 

 chin ; clieeks and ear-coverts white ; nape bluish-ash, whitish in the centre, 

 remainder of body above j-ellowish- green ; wings and tail blue, the greater wing- 

 coverts tipped with white ; breast and abdomen sulphur-j-ellow, with a more or 

 less defined central longitudinal black stripe ; flights and tail feathers below ash- 

 grey ; bill smoky, paler at junction of mandibular edges; feet deep bluish-leaden, 

 inclining to black ; iris dark brown. The female is altogether somewhat duller 

 than tlie male, the cheeks slightly ashy and the under parts suffused with olive- 

 greenish. The young are still duller, the blue being less pronounced, and the 

 plumage generally more yellow. 



Most observant people are familiar with the Blue-Tit, or Tom-Tit as it is 

 frequently called ; yet I have had it described to me as " a foreign bird, evidently 

 escaped from some aviary," which shows that even in this enlightened age, there 

 arc individuals wliose e3'es arc closed to tlie beauties which abound on ever}- side 



