60 Bird-Song : and New Zealand Song Birds 
The white-breasted tit. —Male: head, neck, and back black 
with a white spot over the bill; breast and abdomen pure white. 
Wings, brownish-black, some of the primaries and secondaries 
with a band of white. Tail, blackish-brown, the three outer 
feathers with a band of white. Eye, black. Bill, blackish- 
brown ; feet paler, yellow on their inner surface. Total length, 
5 in., of which the tail is 2^ in. Female: Above, brown, with 
a small white spot over the bill; throat brownish-white, 
abdomen yellowish. Wings and tail like the male, but the white 
on the wings tinged with yellow. Young: In each sex coloured 
like the adult, but the tints paler, and not so pure. 
The yellow-breasted tit.— Like the last, but male yellow on 
the under surface, bright on the breast, paler on the abdomen. 
An almost pure albino was recorded from the Rangitikei 
district by T. W. Kirk (KI, pp. 42-3), the only indication of the 
normal colouring being a small patch of faint grey on one of 
the primaries: the whole of the remaining plumage was a most 
clear white. 
Eggs. —Four; creamy white, freckled all over with yellowish- 
brown, the markings running together and forming a zone at the 
larger end. Almost round in shape, a little over four-fifths of 
an inch in length, and four-fifths in breadth. 
Nest .—In the hollows of trees; it is round and compact, and 
is composed of dry moss, grass, and vegetable fibres felted 
together, the depression two and a quarter inches in diameter. 
"Of the tit or yellow-breasted robin,” says Potts (PO, 
p. 130), “we must say a few words; in some parts it is called 
a robin, because it shows a large amount of that endearing 
confidence and familiarity that distinguishes the red-breast of 
the old country, and renders it almost a sacred bird. ‘Yellow- 
breast’ and his more sombre plumaged mate attend closely 
the labours of the gardener; with patient assiduity they watch 
the turning over of the soil, as spit after spit falls from the 
keen-edged spade; the larvae of grasshoppers, chafers, and 
beetles form the chief part of their prey. 
