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B T T L E - T I T. 



repeatedly seen suddenly to cease from hopping about 

 and all gaze earnestly at some object in the sky ; ye 

 he has often strained his eyes in vain, and so have 

 others that have been with him, and for many minutes 

 before they could just discriminate the minute speck 

 which had so long riveted the attention of the birds 

 frequently, indeed, he has been unable to distinguish 

 any thing, although to them a bird of prey was plainly 

 perceptible, as the nature of their cries evinced 

 Other similar instances might here be added of this 

 wonderfully acute vision of the feathered race in 

 general, but it would too much extend the present 

 digression. Of this, however, we are fully convinced 

 from repeated observation, that, piercing as the eye 

 of a hawk may be, the majority of little birds see 

 nearly, if not quite, as keenly from below ; perhaps 

 quite as much so in proportion, although they want 

 the projecting super-orbital bone and attached mus- 

 cular apparatus of the falcon family, an apparatus 

 which is said to compress the eye and adapt it pecu 

 liarly for telescopic vision. (The osprey, by the way, 

 however, one of the keenest sighted of this very 

 family, is also without this projecting bone.) Indeed 

 it is very well known that the common fowl, or the 

 turkey, perceives the kite when far above the reach 

 of human ken ; and we think it will be found that 

 this exquisite acuteness of vision is common to very 

 nearly all the feathered tribes. The hawks, it may 

 be remarked, which prey most on small birds, are 

 those which come upon them unawares; of the high- 

 flying species, the hobby attacks chiefly the lark, as 

 it perceives it mounting to the sky ; the kestril drops 

 almost wholly upon mice ; and the merlin (at least in 

 winter in the cultivated districts, where only the 

 writer of this has seen it) skims swiftly along the 

 hedges, turns a corner, and comes suddenly on a flock 

 cf larks or finches, which, crouching or flying terrified 

 in all directions, he singles out his victim, strikes it, 

 and is gone in an instant. 



Birds whose habits lead them to the open fields 

 would be continually exposed to danger, were they 

 not thus enabled by quick and powerful vision to 

 guard against enemies from above; and those enemies 

 would have no occasion for their extraordinary powers 

 of enduring hunger and fatigue, and would multiply 

 to the extirpation of their prey, if the constant vigi- 

 lance of the latter did not prompt them to flee instantly 

 to shelter, or to crouch and lay motionless like a por- 

 tion of the surface, (the colour of which they always 

 resemble, each species that of its appropriate haunt,) 

 whenever the dreaded figure of a bird of prey first 

 dimly presented itself hovering in the blue distance. 

 It is even questionable whether the attention of pre- 

 dacious birds which seek their prey upon the ground 

 is ever excited, but by perceiving some object to be 

 in motion ; and it is also extremely probable that, in 

 every instance, the prey is first singled out when 

 unawares. There are a considerable number of small 

 land birds, however, which possess in very great per- 

 fection the faculty of distinguishing minute objects 

 at an immense distance, but in which the immediate 

 purpose of this faculty is not altogether so apparent ; 

 we allude to the mass of thrushes and warblers, which 

 (from observations made on them in confinement) 

 appear even to excel the ground birds in the promp- 

 titude with which they discover a distant foe. Now 

 these are mostly the inhabitants of trees and bushes, 

 amid the intricacies of which they can almost always 

 effectually shelter themselves from the attacks of 

 enemies from above; and the majority of them are 



never, like the fly-catchers, in the habit of watching 

 the distant flight of insects through the air. Possibly, 

 however, their powerful and acute vision may be of 

 great and constant use toward finding their food, by 

 distinguishing small caterpillars and various insects 

 crawling among the foliage of a distant bough, and so 

 enabling them to come at once upon their prey, which 

 otherwise might be long sought for with little success. 

 But there are still certain other groups of species, 

 the eyes of which are very full and convex, and which 

 are consequently particularly adapted for very close 

 or microscopic vision ; and many of these, especially 

 the gold-crest, evidently do not very clearly distin- 

 guish a large object, such as a human form, except it 

 is in motion, when only they appear to evince alarm 

 at its proximity. These are either bark birds, which 

 creep about and subsist on the various insects which 

 at all seasons lurk about the boles and larger branches 

 of trees, or they are diminutive and hardy kinds, 

 which examine the smaller twigs and sprays, and by 

 constant exertion contrive to reap, both in winter and 

 summer, an abundant harvest of small insects and 

 larvae, and of minute insect eggs which are deposited 

 in such situations. These latter birds are the titmice 

 and allied genera, which, brought together under the 

 general term Farinas, named from Parus, the typical 

 genus, or that in which the more characteristic pecu- 

 liarities of the group are most observable, form 

 another of the marked leading divisions into which 

 the SylviadcE or great warbler family is divisible*. 



The species of this division are mostly of diminu- 

 tive size, but are generally of compact, short, well 

 knit forms, and so warmly clothed with a dense co- 

 vering of long puffy feathers (the webs of which are 

 loose and discomposed), that they seem to bid defi- 

 ance to all the rigours of winter. They are all of 

 very social habits, except in the breeding season, and 

 in several of the species the young follow their 

 parents till the influence of that season prompts 

 them to separate into pairs, at which time they are 

 violently pugnacious. They nestle in the holes of 

 trees or buildings, which are well lined, or they con- 

 struct with wonderful art large and beautiful domed 

 nests, which are warmly lined with a profusion of 

 vegetable down, or soft feathers : a considerable 

 degree of warmth seems here indispensable; and 

 these hardy little residents, which brave the severest 

 winters of our climate, prepare much warmer recep- 

 tacles for their young than the mass of our small 

 migrating summer visitants ; but their broods are 

 more numerous, eight or ten being about the usual 

 average, and some species (as the subject of the 

 present article) will sometimes lay as many as four- 

 :een or even sixteen eggs, though twelve is a more 

 ccrrmron number: these, however, breed but once in 

 he season. It would appear, therefore, that the heat 

 generated by so small a body is insufficient to incu- 

 )ate so many, unless it be retained within a fabric of 

 he most non-conducting materials ; yet still it is by 

 no means unusual to meet with one or more addled 

 eggs in the nests of these birds, which appear to have 

 sunk below the others into the downy yielding 

 substance with which they are lined, and so to have 

 been beyond the influence of the necessary heat 

 generated by the sitting bird. We have particularly 

 observed this in the nests of the bottle-tit and gold- 



For another of these divisions, the Saxicoline, or wheatear 

 and robin group, see the article BLUE-BIRD. These groups are 

 hardly as yet sufficiently established to be placed in alphabetical 

 onler iu the body of this work. 



