GOLD-CRESTED REGULUS. 
197 
The occurrence of this bird crossing the Mediterranean at the 
migratory period in spring, will be found noticed under the 
willow wren. 
GOLD-CRESTED REGULUS. 
Gold- crested Wren. 
Regulus cristatus, Will. ; Ray. 
Motacitta regulus , Linn. 
Sylvia, ,, Lath. 
This very small and beautiful bird is common, and resi- 
dent in plantations throughout Ireland. 
In the north its song is occasionally commenced early in the 
month of February,* and has been heard at the end of September. 
On one occasion, when a friend was attending to the process of 
nidification adopted by a chaffinch which built within view of his 
window at Cromac, it was discovered that he was not the only 
spectator, a regulus at some little distance being also recognised 
as a looker-on, and, as afterwards proved, with sinister intent. 
When the chaffinch took flight from the nest, this bird, in the 
most cunning manner, stole round in an opposite direction 
aud carried off part of the materials. Such was its common 
practice, as observed in at least a dozen instances; but the 
chaffinch eventually discovering the regulus in the act, gave it 
a severe chase through the plantation, and its mal-practices were 
never afterwards known to be repeated. More than this isolated 
instance of theft can be brought against the “gold-crest;” for 
another friend remarks, from personal observation, that “ the nest 
is open at the top and like a chaffinch's, from whose nest it steals 
the materials for its own.” Notes are before me of three nests, 
observed in the same summer. One was placed in a cypress ; 
another was neatly fixed to the branch of a silver-fir whose spin- 
ous leaves shaded the little opening of one inch diameter ; it was 
* Mr. S. Poole has heard it in the county of Wexford on the 3rd of January. 
