156 PARID^E. 



of their chief, to some other station : and when overtaken 

 by night, they halt and encamp where chance has left 

 them. Their only requisite is, in summer, the branch of a 

 tree; in winter, some sheltered place where they can huddle 

 together, and sleep until the next day's sun calls them to 

 resume their erratic course.* Their food, during these jour- 

 neys, consists of caterpillars, small beetles, and the pupa? of 

 insects generally, and this diet they seem never or very rarely 

 to vary.f The ripest fruits do not tempt them to prolong 

 their stay in a garden, and insects that crawl on earth are 

 in two senses beneath their notice. Their rapid progress 

 from tree to tree has been compared to a flight of arrows. 

 Singular as is their flight, they are no less amusing while 

 employed in hunting for food, as they perform all the 

 fantastic vagaries of the Tits, and their long straight tails 

 add much to the grotesqueness of their attitudes. Seen 

 near at hand, their appearance may be called comical. 

 Their abundant loose feathers, the prevailing hue of which 

 is grey, suggest the idea of old age, and, together with the 

 short hooked beak, might give a caricaturist a hint of 

 an antiquated human face, enveloped in grey hair. Many 

 of the provincial names of the bird are associated with 

 the ridiculous : thus, Long-tailed Mufflin, Long-tail Mag, 

 Long-tail Pie, Poke-pudding, Huck-muck, Bottle Tom, 

 Mum-ruffin, and Long-pod, pet names though they are, 

 are also whimsical, and prepare one beforehand for the 

 information that their owner is "just a little eccentric." 

 But whatever be their name, I never hear the well-known 

 " zit, zit," the pass-word which keeps them together, and 



* The name proposed for the Long-tailed Tit, by Dr. Leach, 

 Mecistura vagans, is most appropriate. "Long-tailed Wanderer," 

 for such is its import, describes the most striking outward charac- 

 teristic of the bird, and its unvarying habit. 



t A young friend informed me that he had once shot one, with a 

 beech-nut in its mouth. This it must have picked up from the 

 ground, as the season was winter. 



