CRESTED TITMOUSE 
71 
eight eggs, though this number is sometimes much 
exceeded. The eggs are white, speckled, and 
spotted with light red, and cannot be distinguished 
with any certainty from those of the Cole Tit and 
Marsh Tit. Once again, it is necessary to see the 
bird. By the time that the breeding season is over 
the labours of the old birds in looking after their 
numerous family make them very worn and shabby, 
compared with their brilliant April smartness. In 
the family parties, which are often to be seen to- 
wards midsummer, the parent birds are almost as 
dingy in colour as the newly-fledged young, though 
they keep the remains of their bright blue mark- 
ings, whereas the young can be distinguished by 
their duller plumage of variegated yellows and 
greens. The total amount of damage done to 
fruit-buds, ripe apples and pears, and possibly 
garden seeds by this bird is very small indeed in 
comparison to the enormous number of injurious 
grubs and insects destroyed by it in the course of 
the year. 
CRESTED TITMOUSE. 
{Par us cr is tat us.) 
The Crested Tit only breeds in this country 
in the remains of the ancient Scotch pine forests, 
which now survive, in anything like their former 
