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CHESTNUT-CROWNED TITMOUSE. 



Partis minimus, Towns. 

 PLATE CXXX.— Male and Female. 



My friend Nttttall's account of this Titmouse is as follows. "We first 

 observed the arrival of this plain and diminutive species on the banks of the 

 Wahlamet, near to its confluence with the Columbia, about the middle of 

 May. Hopping about in the hazel thickets which border the alluvial 

 meadows of the river, they appeared very intent and industriously engaged 

 in quest of small insects, chirping now and then a slender call of recognition. 

 They generally flew off in pairs, but were by no means shy, and kept always 

 in the low bushes or the skirt of the woods. The following day I heard 

 the males utter a sort of weak monotonous short and quaint song, and about 

 a week afterwards I had the good fortune to find the nest, about which the 

 male was so particularly solicitous as almost unerringly to draw me to the 

 spot, where hung from a low bush, about four feet from the ground, his little 

 curious mansion, formed like a long purse, with a round hole for entrance 

 near the summit. It was made chiefly of moss, down, lint of plants, and 

 lined with some feathers. The eggs, six in number, were pure white, and 

 already far gone towards being hatched. I saw but few other pairs in this 

 vicinity, but on the 21st of June, in the dark woods near Fort Vancouver, I 

 again saw a flock of about twelve, which, on making a chirp something like 

 their own call, came around me very familiarly, and kept up a most incessant 

 and querulous chirping. The following season (April 1S3G) I saw numbers 

 of these birds in the mountain thickets around Santa Barbara, in Upper 

 California, where they again seemed untiringly employed in gleaning food 

 in the low bushes, picking up or catching their prey in all postures, some- 

 times like the common Chickadee, head downwards, and letting no cranny 

 or corner escape their unwearied search. As we did not see them in the 

 winter, they migrate in all probability throughout Mexico and the Californian 

 peninsula at this season." 



According to Mr. Townsend, "the Chinooks name it a-ha-ke-lok. It is 

 a constant resident about the Columbia river; hops about in the bushes, and 

 frequently hangs from the twigs in the manner of other Titmice, twittering 

 all the while with a rapid enunciation resembling the words thshish, tshist, 

 tsee, twee. The irides are bright yellow." 



