COAL TITMOUSE. MAKSH TITMOUSE. 147 



in confinement) of hiding a portion of their food, 

 and again returning to their hoard when hungry; an 

 action not noticed under similar circumstances in the 

 great or blue tits. He also acquits the first two 

 species of those carnivorous or rather predaceous habits, 

 particularly exhibited by the great tit. It would be 

 useless to attempt to render in my present space, 

 even were it practicable, the various notes of our 

 British species; alike in character, yet so strangely diver- 

 sified, and in the great tit especially, so imitative of 

 others. The most usual cry, however, of the coal tit, 

 resembles if-hee, if-hee, if-hee, repeated sharply and 

 quickly ; of the great tit, pincher, pincher, pincher, often 

 changing into the vink, vink of the chaffinch ; and the 

 marsh tit's has been given as like tis-yipp, tis-yipp, with 

 an occasional cliicka, cliicka-chee. The blue-cap's notes, 

 by no means easy of imitation, are happily too well 

 known to necessitate any description of them. 



PARUS PALUSTEIS, Linnseus. 

 MAESH TITMOUSE. 



The Marsh Tit, like the preceding species, is also 

 resident throughout the year, but is by no means con- 

 fined to such localities as its name implies. Though 

 commonly met with by rivers and streams and in other 

 low and damp situations, it is also found in our fir- 

 plantations and in gardens and orchards far from any 

 water, where, in autumn, they feed on the seeds of 

 various berries, being particularly partial to those of 

 the snowberry shrub (Symphoria racemosa). Before I 

 discovered the actual depredators I had often observed 

 that the berries on these shrubs in my garden disap- 

 peared very rapidly, and, moreover, that the berries 

 u2 



