no THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



in Yorkshire .... He sent me also Pants ater, as generally 

 thought, tho' it does not agree with Gesner's short description." 

 (The Works of Walter Moyle, Esq., 1726.) 



Thomas Allis, in 1844, wrote : 



Parus ater. Cole Tit It is not infrequent in most woody districts. 



Although not so numerous as the Great and Blue Tit, 

 the present species is, on the whole, fairly common and 

 generally met with, except in remote south-west and north- 

 west portions of the West Riding, where it is to a certain 

 extent local during the breeding season, though more 

 generally distributed, or perhaps more in evidence, during 

 the autumn and winter, when it consorts with other small 

 birds which rove through the woods in search of food. 



The favourite haunts of this bird are fir plantations, 

 and in both summer and winter it is almost always to be found 

 in these localities, even in the highest situations. 



Owing to the scarcity of suitable nesting holes in the 

 pine and fir woods in north-west Cleveland I have noticed 

 that it occasionally excavates a hollow in the old nests of 

 Magpies or Squirrels and, lining the inside with wool, hair, and 

 other nesting materials, utilises the lofty site for its home. In 

 woods at a lower elevation a hole in a tree, in a rotten stump, 

 or in the ground, is usually selected, but this Tit, like the 

 others of its family, often resorts to peculiar dwelling places. 



The two extreme varieties of this bird have been accorded 

 specific rank by some systematists of the present day ; the 

 olive-brown backed form being styled P. britanniciis (Sharpe 

 and Dresser), while the continental race, with slate-grey back, 

 retains the name bestowed on the species by Linnaeus, viz., 

 P. ater ; but, as gradations between these two forms occur 

 in the British Isles, I consider the best course is to treat 

 our bird as an insular form of the continental species. 



The latter is said by the late J. Cordeaux to be an 

 occasional straggler to our coast in autumn (Cordeaux MS. 

 Nat. 1896, p. 8 ; 1899, p. 24), but I am not aware of any 

 evidence in support of this statement. 



Its local names are Blackcap, or Little Blackcap, and 

 Tom Tit, in use in the North and West Ridings. 



