ON THE MARSH- AND WILLOW-TITS OF FRANCE. 425 



the Plateau du Segala in the spring of 1.912, while it was quite 

 common up the wooded valleys of the Basses- and Hautes- 

 Pyrenees, and I shot specimens there practically on the Spanish 

 frontier. It breeds and is, to a certain extent, sedentary 

 throughout the rest of France, following the mountain systems 

 down to at least as far south as Savoy (cf. Bailly, Ois. de la 

 Savoie). At high elevations in these Alpine districts it is 

 entirely replaced by P. b. montanus. 



This latter bird, the large Alpine Willow-Tit, inhabits the 

 upper forests of the Jura * and various Alpine systems, rarely 

 descending below 3000 ft. In the summer its vertical range 

 commences at about 4000 ft. and extends up to the limit 

 of the forest growth. In the Alpes-Maritimes I have en- 

 countered it up to 6000 ft., frequenting the larch woods in 

 preference to those composed of spruce and fir, which latter 

 are always the favourite haunts of its allies, the Coal and 

 Crested Tits. 



The song of the Alpine Willow-Tit is a somewhat melancholy 

 pipe — a single note repeated four or five times consecutively; 

 while its cry of alarm is a deep, scolding chooo, chooo, chooo, 

 more prolonged and delivered in a rather lower key than that of 

 a Marsh-Tit. Both birds possess variations of this, one might 

 almost call it, the " family " note. In P. p. communis it 

 resembles the syllables wee-choo, choo, choo. The song of the 

 latter bird, by the way, seems to vary in different districts, and 

 when I was collecting in the Pyrenees, at first I was much 

 puzzled by its voice. In this locality the males uttered a clear 

 chai, chai, chai, sounding to me more like part of a Tree Pipit's 

 song than that of a Titmouse. 



The claim of the Rhenish Willow-Tit (P. b. rhenanus 

 Kleinschm) to be included in the avifauna of France rests, first, 

 on the slender evidence of two questionable specimens having 

 been bought in the markets of Paris and, secondly, upon two 

 sooty-crowned birds from the Vosges Mountains now in the 

 British Museum. These latter certainly appear to be referable 



* Personally I have not met with it in this range, but Fatio (cf. Cat. Ois. 

 de la Suisse) says it is sedentary in the Upper Jura from the French frontier 

 to the Jura Neuchatelois. 



