5 
As we before stated, the Crested Tit is chiefly insectivorous, though, according to several 
careful observers, it also feeds on small seeds of various trees. It is a most useful bird, as, 
indeed, are all the Tits, and destroys a large quantity of injurious insects by feeding on their 
larvee and eggs, which latter it searches carefully for in the small interstices in the bark of trees. 
According to Bailly it occasionally feeds on juniper berries, and from them a taste is imparted to 
its flesh, from which we infer that the natives of the PSuey south include such small deer as even 
the Crested Tit in their list of gibier. 
Mr. Carl Sachse, of Altenkirchen, in Rhenish Prussia, a most excellent field-naturalist, sends 
us the following particulars respecting the nidification of this bird :— 
“With us it (Parus cristatus) nests in deserted Crow, Magpie, or Squirrel nests, as also in 
mountain-ash trees by the road-side, in hollow oak trees, and such like. I have also found 
several nests built by the bird itself and placed in juniper bushes, with entrance-hole at the side, 
exactly resembling those of Troglodytes ewropwus—and also similar ones in pine trees, twenty feet 
above the ground. I have also found nests in hollow tree stumps near the ground. They have 
eggs here from the 25th April to 15th May, and breed twice in the year.” 
It appeared to us so strange that our Crested Tit should affect such a peculiar mode of 
nidification, that we wrote to Mr. Sachse and asked for some fuller particulars, as, were he not so 
reliable a naturalist, we should be almost inclined to suppose that some mistake had occurred. 
He immediately replied as follows :— 
““In reply to your inquiry as to whether the note respecting Parus cristatus was from 
personal observation, I may assure you that I only send you notes of observations made by 
myself personally, and hold it a point of honour not to add any thing; and you may therefore 
rely on what I tell you. 
“T believe that the first nest I found constructed by the Crested Tit itself I discovered on 
the 5th April, 1867; and it contained five half-incubated eggs. I saw the Tit slip out of the 
juniper bush, but thought I must have made a mistake so soon as I saw the nest, which exactly 
resembled that of the Common Wren, except that no feathers were inside, and on the outside 
more twigs were plaited amongst the moss. The bird soon returned; but still I could not 
believe it, though the eggs did not resemble those of the Wren, but had many more markings, 
‘some of them being in one example brownish black. As I never knew that the Crested Tit 
nested in such a manner, I sent them.to Dr. Baldamus, stating full particulars as to the mode 
in which the nest was built, &c.; and in reply to my inquiries as to what eggs they were, he 
replied that they were typical eggs of Parus cristatus. ‘The question is, if the Tit had made use 
of a Wren’s nest, or built the nest itself. 
“J again found a similar nest in a juniper thicket on the 12th June, 1868, and again 
another on the 3rd June, 1869, in a pine tree about fifteen feet from the ground, containing half- 
grown young. I thought it must be a nest of the Long-tailed Tit; but I watched the old birds 
bringing food for the space of quite an hour; so there can be no mistake about it. 
“‘The mode in which birds sometimes build their nests is certainly curious and incom- 
prehensible; for how is it that the Fire-crested Wren builds sometimes in thin juniper bushes in 
the immediate neighbourhood of pine trees, which would prove a much better place to hide 
their nests, which are generally so carefully concealed? and how is it that the otherwise so shy 
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