Tour in Cyprus in 1887. 119 



to my notice from my having pursued a C'mclus into a place 

 in which advance and retreat were equally impossible. My 

 safe arrival at the top of the cliff after a desperate climb was 

 a piece of good fortune for which I cannot be sufficiently 

 thankful. 



I reached Kikko Monastery on the 2oth May. It is 

 situated at an altitude of 4000 feet, and is the home of a 

 hundred monks and probationers, and many thousands of 

 Swifts, Swallows, and Martins. The deep valleys around are 

 clothed with arbutus and other evergreens, but tne hills are 

 arid-looking enough, their barren shaly rock only half hidden 

 by vegetation. I had hoped to find some marked change in 

 the bird-life at this elevation, but I was doomed to disap- 

 pointment. The ever-present Saxicola morio and equally 

 ubiquitous Emberiza ccesia were common enough, and in the 

 thicker coppices the Nightingale and Garden ^Varbler poured 

 out a torrent of song, but there was little else, and I cursed 

 my stupidity in having dismissed my mules and condemned 

 myself to a five days' imprisonment in such a place. 



At a short distance from the monastery there was a clump 

 of pines where it was possible to obtain some little shade 

 from a sun that had by this time becone unpleasantly power- 

 ful. It was while watching, gun in hand, beneath these, 

 that I first obtained a Coal Titmouse, which at once struck 

 me by the extreme darkness of the plumage of the under 

 surface. Mr. Dresser has described it at a recent meeting 

 of the Zoological Society as a new species, and named it Parus 

 Cypriotes (Plate II.). It differs, he says, from Parus ater '\\ 

 having the upjier parts brownish, as in Parus britannicus, 

 but rather darker, in having the white nuchal patch almost 

 obsolete, and in having the black on the throat extended 

 much further down than in Parus ater, thus covering a much 

 larger area. The underparts are tinged with buff, the flanks 

 and under tail-coverts being much darker in tint. 



This little Parus was far from plentiful, for I only shot four 

 during my stay at the monastery, although I waited beneath 

 the pines for them for the greater part of each morning. I 

 never saw it at a lower elevation than this (4000 ft.), or any- 



