11 
bird hangs, or balances itself at the tip of little branches or young shoots of the fir trees, or 
clings tightly to the trunk of a tree or the crevices of the bark, so as to gain an easy position for 
capturing the prey it meets with; lastly, like the Coal Titmouse, it feeds on kernels or seeds of 
green trees, bushes, and alpine plants, with berries or little wild fruits, insects, flies, large gnats, 
butterflies and spiders’ eggs, ants, larvee, caterpillars, and butterflies. 
“After the nesting-season is over, or rather after the bringing up of the young, it is rarely 
seen alone. It lives then in families until the approach of winter, and forms little bands which 
traverse without intermission all day the woods of pines, firs, and larches; it is especially on the 
outskirts of these woods, or on the trees encircling the glades, that they are to be noticed. But 
as soon as they have visited them in every part, they bury themselves for a few moments in the 
depth of the woods, whence their call-note, which is very different from that of all their con- 
geners, discovers them every instant. From its ery, which is heavy, rather drawn out, and even 
a little trembling, it seems that this ‘Titmouse utters a syllable cré, repeated three or four times 
in succession, at equal intervals, and in the same tone; but another and more rapid syllable some- 
times precedes it. It is in this way pronounced ¢it-cré, cré, cré, cré, the vowel é being always 
long. 
“It often happens that these little companies grow extraordinarily large from one instant to 
another, as they join other families of their own species or Crested Titmice, and especially of 
Coal Titmice, or still more those of Goldcrests, or Creepers. All these little fliers, thus 
assembled, frequent in common and in the most perfect agreement the accessible parts of the 
woods of their district; they disperse afterwards in families or little troops as they enter the 
thicker parts of the woods...... 
“This Titmouse remains attached to the district where it was once hatched. ‘The winter 
does not succeed in driving them away; but the young birds especially descend every year from 
our mountains during the rigour of the cold season, to stay a short time in the evergreen woods 
of the small hills and mountains which crown the plains. It does not migrate from Savoy, like 
most of its congeners, at the approach of the bad season. In winter it prefers to live in pairs, 
male and female, or from three to five individuals together, rather than in such numerous bands 
as in the autumn. Its flesh then contracts in many of our mountains a taste of resin, which 
doubtless proceeds from the consumption it makes of seeds and fresh shoots of evergreens. 
“Tt is about the end of April that the Alpine Titmouse in Savoy takes to the act of repro- 
duction. Some couples, however, especially those which have not ceased to inhabit the highest 
forests of our Alps, do not proceed to the work of love before the first days of May, when the 
snow commences to leave these heights; these nest about the 20th of this month, and have 
but one brood. ‘The others, which breed sooner than those from the less elevated regions, make 
two nests a year, one about the end of April or the beginning of May, the other towards the 20th 
or 30th of June. ‘The male and female construct their nest in the small natural holes of trees, 
situated sometimes in the trunks, sometimes in the vertical or even the horizontal branches of 
fir trees, and more especially of larches. They compose it outwardly of slips of grass, mosses, 
and lichens, which they pile up thickly at the base of the cavity; afterwards they furnish the 
interior with hair, feathers, wool,.and thistle-down. From six to nine eggs, very rarely ten, are 
the result of their amours..... The young. ones are hatched on the fifteenth or sixteenth day of 
DE 
Jie 
