58 GREAT TIT. 
filled with it: in the middle was a most exquisitely- 
formed round hollow, and altogether it was exceedingly 
pretty and comfortable. 
Mr. J. Brain, of Sleights, near Whitby, has obliged 
me with a nest and eggs of this species, from which 
the plate is taken. 
The eggs, from six to eleven in number, are pure 
white, dotted all over irregularly with reddish brown. 
One variety is thus much marked at the thicker end, 
with a few scattered specks over the remainder of the 
surface. 
A second is very elegantly dotted with rather large 
spots, few in number. 
A third is mottled faint orange brown, rather most 
so at the larger end. 
The hen sits closely on them, and the male keeps a 
station not far off, both of them equally pugnacious in — 
defence of their progeny, the latter utterimg loud cries 
of anger or distress, and the former hissing as she sits. 
The young are said, after they have left the nest, not 
to return to it, but to perch for some time in the 
neighbouring trees, and to keep together until the fol- 
lowing spring. It is somewhat singular that the eggs 
of this species resemble those of the Nuthatch, to which 
bird it also has some similarity in the loud tapping 
noise it occasionally makes against the trunks of trees, 
and which has been conjectured to be for the purpose 
of frightening insects out from under the bark. 
a 
