THE LONG-TAILED TIT. 211 



Tipperary. In 1838, it was first known to visit the neighbour- 

 hood of Clonmel.* Mr. Poole mentions this bird as common about 

 Ballitore, county of Kildare, but rare in Wexford, at least about 

 his residence. Mr. Neligan had not (1837) met with it in Kerry. 

 The species may not improbably be found in every county through- 

 out the island possessing abundance of wood. 



To meet with a family of these birds is always interesting, but 

 they have particularly attracted my admiration when flitting over 

 the waters of a river, and about the overhanging trees that 

 border it. I have frequently noticed them among alders and birches, 

 and they often appear about hawthorn hedges, in the vicinity 

 of plantations. The first which came within my view excited 

 attention by its peculiar note uttered when stationary, and though 

 different from that of the other titmice, its generic similarity 

 satisfied me that it must proceed from some species of this 

 tribe. Its call, when in motion, is soft, thus differing from the 

 shrill little voices of others of the same genus, with which it seems 

 less to consort, than with the gold-crested regulus. In the middle 

 of March, I noted a couple of them at some little distance 

 from each other, uttering quite different calls, the one being of 

 two or three syllables, the other of several. The beauty of this 

 bird is much enhanced, when its breast exhibits a fine roseate hue. 

 A nest with eggs, taken at Bally drain, near Belfast, on the 1st of 

 August, 1843, and brought to me, resembled that figured by 

 Mr. Yarrell : it was covered over, or closely spangled, with bits of 

 lichen, and built in the fork of an old apple tree : — at Stran- 

 millis, a few miles distant, one was erected in a cytisus shrub. 

 Mr. Poole has seen the nest both in the hawthorn and the larch : 

 that in the latter tree was affixed to the stem about twelve feet from 

 the ground. A nest from the Phoenix Park, presented to the 

 Natural History Society of Dublin, was described as fixed in the 

 fork of a branch of black-thorn (Prunus spinosa), and com- 

 pletely screened from observation by the lichen Ramalina fasti- 

 giata, which grew profusely on the branches of the thorn. The 



* Davis. 



p2 



