Notes on the Blue Titmouse or Blue Mope. By M. Saul, Esq.
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a, b, c. Sections of a tree, showing cavities made by a pair of blue titmice.
d. A stone bottle in which another pair built their nest.
Thirty-one species of the titmouse genus are scattered over the globe; of these eight only are known in our own country.[1] They are remarkable for ingenuity and boldness, and do much mischief by picking off the buds of fruit-trees. The blue titmouse is a very prolific bird, laying from ten to twenty eggs, of a beautiful white, sprinkled over with delicate rust-coloured spots. They feed for the most part on seeds, fruit and insects, but also occasionally on flesh, and are particularly fond of the brains of other birds, which they get at by cleaving the skull with their strong beaks, when they are so fortunate as to find one dead. They are bold, restless birds, and are particularly cruel to birds less than themselves, and often attack and tease others that are three times their own size. In the months of April and May last my attention was attracted by a pair of these birds which had built a nest in an alder tree by the road- side where I had to pass, and the circumstances connected with it were so interesting to myself, that I thought they might prove acceptable to some of the readers of 'The Zoologist.'
The tree, or rather stump, was about four feet in height and ten inches and a half in diameter; and being covered with ivy, it had a very
- ↑ We are only acquainted with seven species of titmouse:—the great tit (Parus major), the blue tit (P. cæruleus), the crested tit (P. cristatus), the cole tit (P. ater), the marsh tit (P. palustris), the long-tailed tit (P. caudatus), and the bearded tit (P. biarmicus); the two last have been separated as distinct genera, the former under the name of Mecistura, the latter under that of Calamophilus.—Ed.
