Ill 



A Brood of Long-tailed Tits. By James Smail, 

 F.S.A. (Scot.), Edinburgh, President. 



Macgillivray says, "I have seen a nest in which were 

 sixteen young ones." In Rule Water valley, in Duncan's 

 Hollow, I once saw a brood of Long-tailed Tits, numbering 

 fourteen. They had newly left the nest, and they were all 

 perched side by side, and as close as they could possibly 

 sit, on a horizontal twig in the centre of an old hawthorn 

 tree. They seemed sleeping, and were evidently resting. 

 At the first glance I could not make out what they were ; 

 they looked like a roll of feathers, of about a foot in 

 length, stuck on to the branch. I noticed that they were 

 sitting, to use a homely phrase, heads-and-thraws. I cut 

 the small branch on which they sat, and quietly withdrew 

 it from the tree. When this took place, eleven of the 

 younglings fluttered on to the grass, but three of them 

 steadily held their seats till I carried them to the house 

 where I was staying, and back — a short distance, however. 

 When I took them back I found the parent birds excited 

 and busy, attending to the wants of the others, and my 

 three small long-tails were joyously received. 



