The Bearded Reedling. 141 



Astrilds are in the habit of doing ; it must also be remembered that many 

 Ploceine birds are extremely Tit-like in their habits, that the majority of them 

 are reed birds, feeding (precisely in the same way as the Reed-Pheasant) on seeds 

 of reeds and grasses, and small insects." 



Stevenson, in his "Birds of Norfolk," says: — "I cannot help feeling, — that 

 Macgillivray, guided by an examination of its digestive organs, was right in 

 considering it more allied to the Fringilline than the Parine group." 



Even the fact that this species eats small fresh-water mollusca does not, in 

 any way, militate against its relationship to the Finches, many of which (and 

 especially Ploceine Finches) eat worms with avidity, and would, in a wild state, 

 probably devour small mollusca if they chanced to meet with them : indeed it is 

 probable that the lime required by these little birds when laying is chiefly 

 obtained from the shells of small land-, or fresh-water mollusca. 



Family— PANURID^. 



The Bearded Reedling. 



PaiiiiiHS biariuiciis, LiNN. 



ALTHOUGH in the main I have judged that I could not do better than 

 follow the classification adopted by Mr. Howard Saunders, in his most 

 excellent " Illustrated Manual of British Birds," my conscience is not 

 sufficiently elastic to allow of my calling the present species a Titmouse. I have 

 therefore adopted the alternative name, in preference to the misleading one of 

 " Reed-Pheasant," which is, to my mind, somewhat too suggestive of Hydro- 

 phasianus : — a bird not strikingly like Fanurus. 



Dr. Gadow states that this bird is distributed "all over Europe (except in 

 Sweden, Norway, and Northern Russia), extending into Turkestan." Seebohm 



