BEARDED TITMOUSE. 519 



but that it has no notion of hammering at a seed, though it 

 would wait patiently by the side of a Titmouse, which was 

 so employed, and when the seed was broken try to make off 

 with the prize. He further observed that its stomach "is ex- 

 tremely strong and muscular," resembling that of a Finch 

 or Bunting, and that its mode of progression on the ground 

 is not by hopping, but " by a curious and peculiar shuffling 

 walk, somewhat like the strut of a Chaffinch, but with the 

 head near the ground." In his second notice of the 

 species he again returns to this peculiarity, which he there 

 terms " a decided walk," and adds that his captive, the better 

 to get at the food, would jump into the seed-pan, " scratching 

 with his feet much in the manner of a gallinaceous bird." 

 This habit of walking instead of hopping is not acquired in 

 confinement, for Vieillot was informed by the younger Baillon 

 that he had seen this species running like a Wagtail on the 

 leaves of water-plants or on the ice. 



This bird formerly bred in most of the south-eastern and 

 eastern counties of England, but nowadays probably the 

 broads of Norfolk alone offer it a home, and even there its 

 numbers have so greatly diminished of late years that, like 

 other very local species, it runs great risk of extirpation. A 

 few may still breed as heretofore in East Suffolk, in Essex, 

 Kent or even Surrey, but there is no satisfactory evidence that 

 such is the case. Its decrease can be sufficiently accounted 

 for by the draining of fens and marshes and the concurrent 

 or consequent destruction of the reed-beds it loves, but 

 there is reason to fear lest its extermination be hastened by 

 the greed of collectors. The long series of engineering 

 operations, completed in 1851 by the draining of Whittlesea 

 Mere, closed its career as a denizen of Huntingdonshire and 

 Cambridgeshire, while its expulsion from Lincolnshire, where 

 it was once common, was doubtless of older date, and Mr. 

 Cordeaux says he has never met with an example killed in 

 that county. From Montagu's account it would seem to 

 have bred in Sussex in his time, but it does so no longer, as 

 Mr. Knox testifies, saying that though formerly not unusual 

 near Pevensey it had, even in 1849, become rare, " most of the 



