146 GOLDCEEST. 



in a cage, where one having died of his wounds, the other 

 again mounted upon it, pecked at it, and tried to draw it 

 round the cage, and this though itself too died shortly 

 afterwards. The female selected a new mate, and built a nest 

 over the spot where the fatal battle was fought. Colonel 

 Montagu also mentions one which would feed her young in 

 a room even when the nest was taken into the hand. He 

 found that she fed her brood once in every minute and a 

 half or two minutes, averaging thirty-six times in the hour, 

 and this for full sixteen hours in a day. The young ones, 

 eight in number, would thus receive, if equally fed, seventy- 

 two feeds each day, the whole amounting to five hundred and 

 seventy-six. The male would not venture into the room. 



They appear to bear confinement pretty well. In severe 

 seasons many perish, and several are frequently at such times 

 found dead in outhouses, the thatch of roofs, and holes in 

 ivy-covered walls, where they had assembled together for 

 mutual warmth under their shelter from the extremity of the 

 wintry blast, and have been known to take up their abode 

 in the nest of the Wren. In those times of scarcity they 

 will even approach houses in search of food, and will enter 

 greenhouses and hothouses. Even in mild seasons some are 

 found in a lifeless state, but only single birds. They usually 

 go in companies of twenty or thirty. It is said that they 

 may be shaken down from a branch by striking a blow against 

 the trunk of the tree. 



In their longer passages from wood to wood, their flight, 

 which is weak, is rather rapid, irregular, and undulating, but 

 in their shorter Sittings more straight. They sometimes 

 exhibit an odd bowing movement of the body, especially in the 

 spring when two are about to fight. They often run up trees 

 with the nimbleness and agility of the Creeper. 



Their food consists principally of small winged and other 

 insects and their larvae, and also of small seeds. In pursuit 

 of the former they carefully search branch after branch, their 

 elegant crests, so to call them, shewing to advantage every 

 now and then; they also seize their prey on the wing, and 

 hover sometimes over the branches before darting on it, and 

 also creep nimbly in a mouse-like manner, up the trunks of 

 trees, seldom in a straight line, but usually in a sloping 

 direction, the capture of an insect being often denoted by a 

 shuffle of the wings: one has also been observed creeping up 

 a wall in like manner, searching for insects. 'The activity 



