474 BRITISH BIRDS. 



near houses. Its favourite haunts are the plantations and the copses near 

 the moorlands ; and it is often seen in little parties in furze-brakes and 

 tangled thickets near streams. Perhaps the best place to study the habits 

 of the Coal Tit is in the birch-copses late in autumn^ when the foliage is 

 thin and the birds readily seen. At this season they are in small parties 

 (broods of the year probably and their parents), and are usually accom- 

 panied by a few Blue Tits, a Great Tit or two, and possibly a Creeper. 

 Their call-note, something like if-hee, If-hee, if-hee, will probably arrest 

 the attention long before the birds themselves are visible. Their actions 

 arc precisely the same as those of the other Tits : the same grotesque 

 attitudes are assumed; each twig is explored in the same business-like way 

 as with their congeners. Sometimes the Coal Tit visits the ground in 

 search of food ; and it may often be seen clinging to walls and posts, 

 searching the crannies, the moss, and the lichens for insects. 



Dixon thus writes of the Coal Tit : — " Perhaps their actions, though some- 

 what resembling those of the Titmice in general, are more rapid than those of 

 other members of the family. You sometimes see them dart through the 

 foliage with great rapidity, chasing each other apparently in sportive glee. 

 There is scarcely a tree or a bush that the Coal Tit does not visit. Now 

 hanging from the long pendent branches of the graceful birch, now searching 

 the thorny sprays of the hawthorn, now on the topmost branches of the oak 

 or ash, then onwards to the drooping elm ; now on the lowly twigs of the 

 liazel or elder-bushes ; then the evergreens in turn are visited ; and even 

 the ivy on the ground is frequently explored. A favourite place to meet 

 with the Coal Tit is on the spreading branches of the fir tree, notably 

 those which are studded with cones. There you see him dextei'ously 

 ejecting the tiny seeds from their scaly bed, the bird very often clinging 

 to the cone, it may be on the extremity of a slender twig, and its active 

 motions causing the branch and its living burden to sway backwards and 

 forwards like the steady beat of a pendulum. A merry little party of 

 wanderers they are, and Irasy themselves with their own affairs alone. 

 When the sun nears the western horizon the Coal Tits, if it be winter time, 

 repair to the verdant branches of the evergreen to roost, or sometimes seek 

 shelter in tlie warm side of a haystack, always seeking that side opposite 

 to the direction in which the wind is blowing. I have also often witnessed 

 the migration of this charming little bird in the mellow days of October. 

 It comes with the Goldcrests, and with them departs ; for in this neigh- 

 bourhood (Riveliu valley) the bird is only represented in the winter 

 months by the few pairs that breed in the woods in this wild i-omantic 

 place. I have seen them in scores in the birch-woods here, tarrying for 

 a week perhaps, and then disappearing as suddenly as they had arrived." 



The food of the Coal Tit is largely composed of insects ; but this bird is 

 also to no small extent a seed-eater. Mr. Tegetmeier gives an instance in 



