TITMICE, CHICKADEES: GRAY TITMOUSE 
511 
except on the plains (Bailey). While 4,600 feet is about the lowest altitude at 
which it occurs in the State, it was found among the jumpers and nut pines [at 
about 5,300 feet southeast of Albuquerque, July 22, 1919 (Ligon)]; and to 6,500 
feet on Mesa Yegua and up to 7,500 feet at Glorieta, July 7-10, 1903 (Bailey). 
It was traced in the Rio Grande Valley, north nearly to Abiquiu, 6,500 feet (Bailey), 
and to near Questa at 7,000 feet (Gaut), but at each place was confined to the 
pinyon pines and the junipers. [In northern Santa Fe County it seems most common 
from 6,500-8,000 feet, where fresh eggs are found May 1 June 10 (Jensen, 1922).] 
Much of west-central New Mexico seems to be too high for this species, but 
it is abundant in the Chuska Mountains (Gilman), and not uncommon at Fort 
Wingate, where young just, out of the nest were noted July 2, 1892 (Fisher). A 
few were seen among the pinyons between Gallup and Zuni, July 24-26, 1909 
(Fisher); and it is common in southwestern New Mexico north to Old Fort Tularosa, 
6,800 feet, October 10-13, 1906; to the upper junipers on the Mimbres, 6,500 feet 
(Bailey); and to the pinyons of the Bear Spring Mountains, September 22, 1905 
(Hollister). It was noted at Fort Bayard September 10, 1914 (Rockhill). It was 
noted but not common at 7,000 feet on the high mesas between Acoma and Lathrops 
Spring, September 27-October 1, 1906. It ranges south to Cactus Flat, November 
6, 1906 (Bailey); and to the Burro Mountains 6,500-7,000 feet, September 15-23, 
1908 (Goldman), being found here among the oaks. In the Guadalupe Mountains 
it was seen occasionally in January, 1915 (Willett).—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —In holes in trees or stumps or in bird boxes in pinyon pines, made of 
soft felted materials and feathers. Eggs: 6 to 8, plain white. 
Food . 1 —Unlike most of the titmice, Baeolophus inornalus in California eats 
less animal than vegetable food, the proportion being 43 per cent of animal to 
57 per cent of vegetable. Of the vegetable matter, fruit amounts to about a third, 
much of it refuse. Leaf galls, seeds of poison oak, weed seeds, and mast also are 
included. Of the animal food, bugs make up 12 per cent, nearly half being the black 
olive scale, and the rest partly leaf hoppers, jumping plant lice, and tree hoppers. 
Caterpillars amount to nearty 11 per cent. Of the beetles, which form nearly 7 
per cent, all are harmful and the weevils are the long-3nouted kind that bore into 
nuts and acorns. Ants, wasps, grasshoppers, and spiders are also eaten. The 
insects it eats are practically all harmful and the scales exceedingly so. Moreover, 
its habit of foraging in trees enables it to capture some of the worst enemies of 
fruit and renders its work in this direction invaluable. If the Gray Titmouse, 
the bird of New Mexico and the arid interior, should ever become abundant in fruit¬ 
growing sections, it would be well to plant wild fruits to protect the cultivated and 
so wholly profit by its presence. 
General Habits. —The attractive Gray Titmouse with its prettily 
crested head and soft Quaker-gray plumage is intimately associated 
with pleasant camps in the low, sun-filled junipers and nut pines of the 
mesas, the low desert ranges, and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. 
And in these low sunny groves the wayfarer hears many of its small 
notes, delightfully homelike and conversational in tone, including 
its rapid wheed-leah , wheed-leah, wheed-leah, repeated three or four 
times in quick succession, and its chickadee-like tsche-de-dee , tu-we- 
twee-twee , sometimes used to preface its loud clear pe-to calls. But its 
1 No statistics are available for the Gray Titmouse but investigations have been made of th«» 
food of the closely related Plain Titmouse. 
