54 BIRDS OF CHESHIRE. 
FAMILY PANURID. 
BEARDED TITMOUSE. 
PANURUS BIARMIOCUS (Linnzeus). 
In the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, are two Bearded 
Titmice, male and female, which Dr. Dobie purchased 
in January 1894 from Mr. W. Cox, a Liverpool taxi- 
dermist. Mr. Cox informed him that these birds 
were shot by himself and a friend on the 2nd or 3rd 
September 1893, in a little ditch full of reeds 
between Hoylake and West Kirby.t| Mr. R. Nunnerley 
of Congleton has a pair of Bearded Titmice, which 
he assures us were shot by his father on Whitley Reed 
forty or fifty years ago. 
The Bearded Titmouse is a species that rarely 
wanders from its usual haunts; and if there has been 
no error about the places where these birds were 
obtained, their occurrence is of the greatest interest. 
The existence of Mr. Nunnerley’s specimens almost 
suggests that the Bearded Titmouse formerly bred at 
Whitley Reed, which fifty years ago was a wild un- 
reclaimed marsh. Were it not that both Dr. Dobie and 
Mr. Nunnerley are confident that their specimens are 
correctly localised, we should hesitate to include the 
Bearded Titmouse in the county list, and in any case 
we feel that additional evidence of its occurrence in 
Cheshire is much to be desired. 
1 Dobie, op. cit. p. 291. 
