116 
10 
recognized by its call-note, which is exactly the same from 1100 to 2200 metres altitude; it 
repeats, in fact, everywhere, once or twice in succession and in a vigorous tone, either the note 
tzi krace, or simply kraee kraee, always making the ae very hard and long. In spring I have 
also heard in Engadine, at a height of 2200 metres, the male of P. borealis produce, besides 
some little hissings, the gentle warblings that Bailly attributes to P. alpestris. j 
“‘ The nesting-time varies, probably according to the elevation and season of the year. Thus, 
in 1863, P. borealis, in its form of P. alpestris, was feeding its young in a nest in the Oberland 
Bernois, at a height of 1100 metres, in the early part of June; the same year P. borealis was 
also feeding its young in the nest in the forests of Haute Engadine, at a height of 2100 metres, 
at the end of the same month. In 1864 P. borealis was only making its nest in Engadine in the 
beginning of June; I have just seen it enlarging with its beak a hole in a larch, which seems the 
result of quite recent labour; it applies to its task astonishing zeal, continually coming out and 
throwing to the bottom of the tree a quantity of débris. Does this ‘Titmouse sometimes hew its 
own hole for the reception of its nest, when by chance it does not succeed in finding one ready 
made? or rather does it confine itself to arranging after this fashion the hole which it finds? I 
cannot as yet answer these questions with certainty; but I must remark, however, that plenty of 
individuals that I have killed in the nesting-season were completely bare (that is to say, had no 
feathers) on the forehead ; perhaps this is caused by the rubbing off of the feathers during the 
work of excavating the hole performed with an instrument comparatively too short for the 
purpose. I must observe, moreover, that I have found, especially in Engadine*, many examples 
furnished in spring with a beak clearly much stouter than that of individuals captured in the 
autumn: can this be the wear and tear of the beak in the work of boring? ‘This seems very 
anomalous; but I shall probably be able a little later to support this statement by analogous 
observations made on other birds; the fact remains, however, that I have found in spring many 
specimens furnished with beaks similar to that of Parus bicolor. 
“When once the young ones are hatched, our Titmouse further loses, like many other 
species, the feathers of the throat in the task of feeding them; it is consequently very difficult 
to procure a bird in breeding-plumage after the month of May. I once killed in Engadine, 
towards the middle of June, a Northern Titmouse in which all the underparts were completely 
washed with a fine tint of deep rose-colour; this tint, which diminished a little on being washed, 
was evidently of vegetable origin, and was probably caused by the branch on which the bird had 
slept, or by the hole in which it had taken refuge.” 
In the ‘ Ornithologie de la Savoie’ (iii. p. 71) Bailly gives a capital account of the habits of 
his Parus alpestris:—“It has the same mode of life as the Coal Titmouse, whose society it 
further seeks singly ; it possesses also the activity and extreme agility of that species; but its call- 
note and love-song are different. Like that bird it hunts all its life long, jumping along branches, 
or climbing up them by means of little sharp flappings of the wings; like it also, the present 
* Tf the Northern Marsh-Titmouse itself hews its own nest-hole when it does not meet with one already 
made, one can easily conceive that it must be under this necessity more often in Engadine than in the 
Bernese Oberland; for, instead of the tender firs inhabited by a crowd of wood-boring birds of the latter 
place, it can find in the first-named nothing but larches &c., of so much harder a nature that very few Wood- 
peckers bore for it. 
