ii6 SKETCHES OF BIRD LIFE. 



brought fresh into Glasgow, killed in a plantation of 

 fir not far distant. Mr. Robert Gray, however, has 

 been unable to trace it in any part of Lanarkshire 

 during the last twenty years. 



The late Dr. H. L. Saxby, whose useful work, 

 The Birds of Shetland, should be on every natu- 

 ralist's book -shelf, has thus pleasantly described, 

 in The Zoologist for 1872, the occasion of his first 

 meeting with the Crested Tit among some Scotch 

 firs at Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh. 



" Their presence," he says, "was betrayed by 

 their peculiar and incessantly repeated notes ; but, 

 even after the discovery had been made, it was no 

 easy matter to keep the birds in view, owing to 

 their continual restlessness, in which respect, as 

 well as in the amusing variety of their motions, they 

 bore a striking resemblance to the more familiar 

 Blue Titmouse. They kept pretty near together, 

 and, for the first twenty minutes or so after my 

 arrival, they appeared to be making but a cursory 

 examination of the trees, constantly flitting from 

 branch to branch, and seemingly obtaining but little 

 in the way of food. At length, without any apparent 

 cause, they all flew off to a small clump of Scotch 



