PARID.E — THE TITMICE. 103 



and resident, being in winter one of the most common, as well as one of 

 the must familiar birds, inhabiting all localities, giving preference neither 

 to swampy woods nor to door-yards, for it is as often seen in one place as 

 another. It is never gregarious, though many may often be seen or heard at 

 the same moment. It begins incubation early in April, generally selecting 

 the wild plum and red-bud trees in the woods. This species very often 

 constructs its own nesting-places, and the soft wood of these trees is very 

 easily excavated. The excavation is generally made in a horizontal dead 

 limb, witli the opening on the under side ; this is neat and regular, and as 

 elaborate as those of any of the woodpeckers. Sometimes,' however, a 

 natural cavity is selected, frequently in a prostrate stump or " snag." The 

 nest is almost always a very elaborate structure, being a strong compact cup 

 or bed of " felt," whose main material is rabl3it-fur and cow-hair. 



In its habits it seems to resemble more closely the F. jMhistris of Europe 

 than the atricapillus, being generally found only in the immediate vicinity 

 of ponds and deep, marshy, moist woods. It is also rarely found other 

 than singly or in pairs, the parent birds, unlike most of this family, separat- 

 ing from their young soon after the latter are able to provide for tliemselves. 

 It rarely or never moves in flocks. 



Their notes are said to be less sonorous and less frequent than those of our 

 Black-capped Titmouse. In the winter a portion retire I'rom the coast in 

 South Carolina into the interior of the State and into Florida, where Mr. 

 Audubon found them, in the winter of 1831 and 1832, much more abun- 

 dant than he had ever seen them elsewhere. He found them breeding as 

 early as February, occasionally in the nests deserted by the Brown-headed 

 Nuthatch. A nest obtained by Dr. Bachman from a hollow stump, aliout 

 four feet from the ground, was in form cup-shaped, measuring two inches 

 internally in diameter at the mouth, and three externally, with a depth 

 of two inches. It was constructed of cotton, fine wool, a few fibres of 

 plants, and so elaborately felted together as to be of uniform tliickness 

 throughout. 



Mr. Aiidubon was in error in regard to the eggs, which he describes as 

 pure white. Their ground-color is of pure crystalline wliiteness, but they 

 are freely and boldly marked all over with deep reddisli-brown and red spots. 

 These, so far as we have compared the eggs, are larger, more numerous, and 

 more deeply marked than are any eggs of the atricapillus we have e\er met 

 with. 



Accortbng to the observations of the late Dr. Alexander Gerhardt of 

 Whittiekl County, Georgia, these birds usually breed in holes that have 

 been previously dug out by the Picus piibescens, or in decaying stumps not 

 more than five or six feet from the ground. He never met with its nest in 

 living trees. The eggs are from five to seven in number, and are usually 

 deposited in Georgia from the 10th to the last of April. 



The eggs of this species are slightly larger than those of the atricapilbiji. 



