PANURID.'E. 91 



THE BEARDED TITMOUSE. 



Panurus liiARMicus (Linnojus). 



The drainage of the reedy fens and meres lias destroyed the 

 former breeding-grounds of the Bearded Tit in Sussex, Kent, Essex, 

 Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire; perhaps — 

 aided by the greed of collectors — even in Suffolk. The places 

 where it can now be observed in the nesting-season are mostly in 

 the Broad-district of Norfolk, and in one locality, which need not be 

 revealed to the exterminator, in Devonshire. As a straggler it has 

 twice occurred in Cornwall ; it has been recorded in Dorset, and 

 up the Thames valley to Gloucestershire ; also in Nottinghamshire 

 and Staffordshire. It is a resident species in England, seldom 

 wandering far from its usual haunts ; and if our indigenous birds 

 should be exterminated, there is little hope that their place would be 

 supplied by migrants from the Continent. 



A mere straggler to Heligoland, and rare in Holstein and 

 Cermany east of the Moselle, it becomes comparatively common in 

 the great reed-beds of Holland ; visiting Belgium in autumn and 

 Luxembourg in winter, to escape the severity of the weather. In 

 France it is principally found in the valley and the delta of the 

 Rhone, and in the marshes below Narbonne. In Spain I observed 

 it in considerable numbers on the Albufcra lake, near Valencia, 

 where it is resident ; as it is also in the marshes of Italy and Sicily. 

 It is found in suitable situations in Poland, Austro-Hungary, South 



