44 



THE BRITISH WILLOW TIT (PARUS ATRI- 

 CAPILLU8 KLEINSCHMIDTI HELLM.). 



BY 



The Hon. WALTER ROTHSCHILD, ph.d. 



In the first number of this Magazme (see j)age 23), Dr. 

 Sclater asks for information about the British Willow 

 Tit, which he calls a supposed new British Tit. 



Like all the wider spread species of Parus, the Willow 

 Tit varies a good deal g-eographically, and those ornitho- 

 logists who want a complete review of these various local 

 races or, as we prefer to call them, subspecies, should 

 consult Dr. Hartert's " Vogel der palaarktischen Fauna." 



Taking the species as a whole we find that the first 

 name applied to a European form was montanus, by 

 Baldenstein, who called the Alpine form of this Tit 

 Parus cinereus Tnontanus, m 1827, his type coming from 

 the Grisons. In 1831, Pastor Brehm called another 

 form Parus salicarius, his type coming from Renthendorf . 

 Lastly, in 1843, Baron de Selys-Longchamps applied to a 

 Willow Tit the name Parus horealis, founding the name 

 on specimens from Norway. 



The first name given to the American forms was Parus 

 atricapillus, given by Linnaeus to Brisson's ^^Mesange a 

 tete noire de Canada." The American group of forms of 

 the Willow Tit differs from the European group principally 

 by the much greater lateral extension of the black throat- 

 patch. 



These American forms all agree with the European 

 ones so closely in the structure of the feathers on the 

 crown and the graduation of the tail, and the other 

 characters which separate the Willow Tits from the Marsh 

 Tits, that it is evident they form a single Holarctic species, 

 having numerous local subspecies. 



