u 4 SKETCHES OF BIRD LIFE. 



insect-food which is not to be procured in the newer 

 timber. The older and decaying wood, also, must 

 naturally furnish more convenient nesting-places 

 than could be easily obtained elsewhere. But what- 

 ever the cause of this scarcity may be, ornithologists 

 are well aware that in England the Crested Titmouse 

 is one of the rarest of our small birds. 



In Ormsby's Sketches of Durham it is stated 

 that this bird had been met with on Sunderland 

 Moor, but from a note in Mr. Hancock's Catalogue 

 of the Birds of Northumberland and Durham, p. 76, 

 it would seem that this is a mistake. A second 

 was killed at Gosforth, Cumberland (Zoologist, 1854, 

 p. 4167). Lewin's statement respecting its occur- 

 rence in Yorkshire (British Birds, vol. v. p. 46) 

 has been confirmed by Mr. Martin Simpson of 

 Whitby, who, in April 1872, recorded in The 

 Zoologist his recent acquisition of a specimen which 

 was shot in a ravine six miles from Whitby. Mr. 

 N. F. Hele, in his interesting Notes about Aide- 

 burgh, Suffolk, includes this species in his list of 

 birds as having been once obtained in the neighbour- 

 hood. Twenty years ago, two examples of the 

 Crested Tit were procured (with an interval of two 



