COMMON BIRDS OF THE YANGTZE DELTA. 3 



and the azure wing magpie, {Cyanopolius cyanus). The 

 common magpie needs no description; he comes daily and 

 always makes himself heard. We hear his noisy clacking call 

 from daylight till dark. Only in the depths of the bamboo 

 forests around Mohkansan in midsummer have I ever seen 

 him subdued; there he is overawed and mostly silent. He 

 is really a very handsome bird, marked with striking 

 contrasts in black, white, and irridescent purple. The 

 Chinese call him the hyi tsiaJi, or wo tsiah. The 

 big loose bunches of sticks in the trees around us are 

 his nests. They are roughly oval, with an entrance at 

 one side near the top. He is smart enough to surround this 

 hole with thorny twigs as a defence against marauders. 

 A nest in my yard last year was so completely protected 

 around the entrance and over the top with prunings from the 

 blackberry vines in the garden, that I could scarcely see 

 how the owners entered without getting. scratched. I paid 

 dearly for the privilege of examining the eggs in the nest. 



The azure wing or san wo tsiah of the Chinese is 

 another permanent resident. They must really be more 

 peaceable than they sound, for in spite of much fussing at 

 each other, the flock remains together throughout the whole 

 year in apparent harmony. They wear a black cap and a 

 white collar, the body above and below is light bluish grey, 

 and the wings and tail beautiful azure blue, the wings having 

 a broad tip of white. 



The nests are built in colonies, usually well up in the top 

 of large trees in the forks of the smaller branches. I found- 

 one colony last year whosei nests were promiscuously mixed 

 with those of the pond heron. The ladies of Trueheart Home 

 in Soochow have had a colony in their yard for two years past. 

 Professor Gee called my attention last year to the fact that 

 they had stripped practically all the outside soft bark from 

 the trunk of a cedar tree on the Soochow University campus 

 to weave into their nests. 



The lesser titmouse (Pariis minor) is another blue 

 grey bird wearing a black cap, that is very common with 

 us; but he is very much smaller than the azure wing — not so 

 large as the common sparrow. His wiflgs are black barred 

 white, and he has a sooty black streak underneath from his 

 chin to his tail. In young birds this streak is not so well 

 marked, and the adults in the spring have a distinct golden 

 sheen on the neck and upper back. The lesser tit is a very 

 familiar little fellow, flitting busily through the trees examin- 

 ing every leaf and twig for the insects on which he feeds. A 

 season's record of what he finds would make an interesting 

 list of harmful insects destroyed. His nest is carefully 

 hidden away in a hollow tree or convenient hole in a wall, 



