MR. J. H. GURNEY ON THE BEARDED TITMOUSE. 
429 
I. 
THE BEARDED TITMOUSE 
PAN U li US BIARMICUS (LIN.). 
By J. H. Gurney, F.Z.S. 
Read 28th March, 1899. 
The Bearded Titmouse — Mesange a mount ache of the French — 
is one of the twenty species for which the British List is indebted 
to the productive County of Norfolk. Here it was discovered by 
Sir Thomas Browne, who, through Ray, brought it to notice in 1074. 
The learned Norwich physician could not have known of its 
existence, when about two years earlier he wrote his invaluable 
‘Birds found in Norfolk,’ but subsequently ho communicated it 
to Ray, and I drew attention to this passage in 1869. Neither 
did Ray know it soon enough to include in the posthumously 
published ‘ Ornithology ’ of Francis Willoughby (1670), so the bird 
was overlooked until Sir Robert Abdy rediscovered it in Essex. 
Practically, the Bearded Titmouse is limited at the present day 
to the Norfolk Broad district, an area twenty-live miles by thirteen, 
of which part is marsh. Here it still breeds annually, and is found 
in little llocks throughout the autumn and winter, but whether all 
these flocks are the same individuals which summer on the Norfolk 
Broads may be doubted : reasoning from the analogous case of the 
Wild Duck, Snipe, and Redshank, they probably are not. It is 
stated to be a summer visitant to some of its Dutch and German 
habitats, and migratory ; and there is a good deal in common 
between Dutch Fens and Norfolk Broads. So scarce has the 
Bearded Tit become that scores of visitors to the Norfolk Broads, 
on Natural History thoughts intent, go away without seeing one. 
Self-interested marshmen would have strangers believe that this 
scarcity is owing to hard winters, but their own cupidity is one 
cause of the decrease, for the truth is, Bearded Tits are not nearly 
so delicate as their frail appearance would seem to betoken, indeed, 
