250 TRANSACTIONS—PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 
LETTER TO THE EDITOR. 
Marsh Titmouse in the Tay Valley. 
38 Morningside Park, 
Edinburgh, i6th October, 1897. 
Dear Sir, —In view of Mr. Harvie-Brown’s statement (Tra?is. 
Perthshire Soc. of Nat. Science, Vol. IT, Part III., page 98) to the 
effect that the Marsh Tit had not, up to the time he was writing 
(November, 1894), been observed in the Valley of the Tay, it may 
be well to draw attention to what the late E. T. Booth wrote in 1882 
in his “Rough Notes” (Part IL). We there read “ A few may 
occasionally be met with in the Lothians; but, with the exception of 
a few stragglers in the neighbourhood of Dunkeld and near Perth, 
I have observed none that could be positively identified in the 
Highlands.” Since the date of Mr. Harvie-Brown’s paper, the 
species has been detected near Doune, in the Forth portion of 
Perthshire, by Lieut.-Colonel Duthie, as recorded in the “Annals 
of Scottish Natural History” for January, 1896. 
The Marsh Tit is also entered (as “ rare ”) in W. Horn’s “ Notes 
on the Birds of the North-west of Perthshire,” read at a meeting of 
the Natural History Society of Glasgow on 25th February, 1879 
{Proceedings IV., page 57); and Mr. Bruce Campbell, Edinburgh, 
tells me he identified one near Ballinluig in the summer of 1893. 
WILLIAM EVANS. 
[Mr. Evans informs us, in a subsequent letter, that he saw a pair of 
Marsh Tits in a ravine behind Bridge of Allan in Feb., 1898. —Ed.] 
With reference to the above Letter, Mr. Harvie-Brown, to 
whom we have communicated it, says :— 
I would be sorry to throw any direct doubt upon the late Mr. Booth’s words, 
of which I was fully aware when I wrote in November, 1894. The few observed 
by Mr. Booth may, or may not, have been observed during migration. The same 
remark applies to the observation made by Mr. Bruce Campbell at Ballinluig. 
The observations of Col. Duthie, whom I personally encouraged to search for the 
bird, which he did for a long time in vain, do not refer to the “Tay” Valley, but 
to the “Forth” Valley. I myself have observed the species more than once on 
the opposite side of the Vale of Menteith, in the Forth Valley, and we have it 
breeding, as an autumn visitor here at Dunipace, also in the Forth Valley; and 
—although possibly an additional fact or record—the seeing of two of the species 
near Bridge of Allan in February is not surprising, considering its fairly-well 
known summer and winter distribution in Eastern Central Scotland. Mr. 
Evans’ notes appear to me to prove nothing as to its breeding within the Tay 
watershed. We now know, thanks to Mr. Evans, that Marsh Tits are found in 
the Valley of the Spey, about and around Aviemore; and we know they breed 
in the Valley of the Forth, but, I hold, there is nothing to show, by proofs that 
