Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/377



It was not until some time after my drawing of this small southern species of Titmouse had been engraved and distributed among my patrons, that I discovered the difference as to size and habits between it and the one which inhabits the Middle and Northern States, and which has been so well described by Wilson, Nuttall and Swainson. Indeed, I never was struck with the difference of size until I reached Eastport in the State of Maine, early in May 1833, when one morning my friend Lieutenant Green of the United States army entered my room and shewed me a Titmouse which he had just procured. The large size of his bird, compared with those met with in the south, instantly struck me.

On my return from Labrador, I immediately proceeded to Charleston in South Carolina, with a view of once more visiting the western portions of the Floridas and the whole coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In the course of conversation with my friend, the Reverend John Baghman, I mentioned my ideas on the subject of Titmice, when he immediately told me that he had for some time been of the same mind. We both went to the woods, and procured some specimens. I wrote to several persons of my acquaintance in Massachusetts, Maine, and Maryland, and before a month had elapsed, I received an abundant supply of the Northern species, preserved in spirits, from my friend John Bethune of Boston, Lieutenant Green, and Colonel Theodore Anderson of Baltimore. We examined and compared many individuals of both species, and satisfied ourselves that they were indeed specifically distinct. The new species, the Carolina Titmouse, is a constant inhabitant of the Southern States, in which I have traced it from the lower parts of Louisiana through the Floridas as far as the borders of the Boanoke River, which separates North Carolina from Virginia, when it altogether disappeared. In these countries it is found only in the immediate vicinity of ponds and deep marshy and moist swamps, rarely during winter in greater numbers than one pair together, and frequently singly. The parent birds separate from the voung probablv soon after the latter are