BIRDS. 



249 



by Hinxman as fairly common in Glenlivet and Strathavon. Early 

 localities noted in Dr. Gordon's Fauna of Moray are Cawdor woods, 

 1833, and Grant Lodge {aud. Mr. S. Foljambe). At the present 

 time Brown of Forres says of it, 'common and abundant.' Mr. 

 Charles H. Alston notes it as 'very scarce' in Upper Badenoch 

 in 1890; in 1893 we ascertained its presence in Strath Nethy. 



Parus br\Xdinr\\cus, Sharpe and Dresser.^ British Cole Tit. 



The commonest of all the family of Tits in the north, going up the 

 glens as far as the trees extend, and at times beyond them, as 

 mentioned by us in the V. Fauna of Sutherland ami Caithness, 

 p. 114, where a pair are recorded as having bred in a crack in a 

 dry hill of peat near Overskaig, on Loch Shin, in 1878. They 

 were first seen at Badenloch in November 1890. 



We were informed that this species does not occur about 

 Invergarry, and certainly we ourselves did not meet with it 

 there during a stay of two or three days in May 1892. We 

 cannot help thinking that it may merely have escaped our notice, 

 or that it may be scarcer there than in most other places. At 

 all events, the fact is curious that it should be so uncommon. 

 Mr. Doncaster met with it in Strathglass and Glen Affric in 1891. 



St. John remarks that the Cole Tit is more uncommon than 

 the Marsh Tit in the woods around Forres ; this probably refers 

 to a period between 1840-50. The Cole Tit is certainly not 

 so common about Inverness as in many other places, but this 

 may be accounted for by the want of birch wood, in which so 

 many of our soft-billed birds live and breed. St. John's experi- 

 ences of the comparative rarity of the Cole Tit is quite the opposite 

 of ours. Of course we cannot say whether any alteration has 

 taken place in their relative numbers since St. J ohn's record. 



In the south of our area the Cole Tit is common, and generally 

 distributed in most parts, but preferring mixed hardwoods and 

 smaller plantations. It is most prominent in early autumn migra- 



1 We cannot consider that Messrs. Dresser and Sharpe were well advised to figure 

 — as a type of the new discovery— in a geographical race which has been named 

 P. britannints—an example obtained amongst the pine forests of the North of Scot- 

 land, even although it had been procured by one of the authors upon a Scotch noble- 

 man's estate. Greater differentiation from the Linnitan type would have been 

 discovered in British examples from more southern localities. 



