Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/399

Rh as it flits rather than flies along with head rather high, in little parties just topping the reeds, and each bird half spreading the twelve graduated feathers of its heavy tail, intended to steer by, but surely incommoding rapid progress.

I have been surprised to find, when walking with an old marshman, an experienced "egger," how often he heard their notes when neither of us could see the bird, long experience in listening for the rarer, and to him profitable species, having sharpened his ear. The clear ringing of their call-notes, which one admirer compares to cymbals, and another to the mandoline, can never, says Lord Lilford, be mistaken for any other European bird by a good ear which has once heard it. By one observer the silvery notes are syllabled as "thein, thein," by another as "ping, ping," or, when alarmed, "churr, churr"; while the provincial name in the south of France is "Trintrin" (Crespon and Jaubert); but here its place is to some extent taken by Ægithalus pendulinus.

It is said that young Bearded Tits, after they have left the nest, sometimes nestle together in a cluster on the reeds of our broads, but this habit does not seem to have been observed on the Continent. Hoy's account of their habits has been quoted already, and need not be repeated (cf. letter, p. 361).

Their food is not entirely the seeds of the reed, but minute water insects and their larvæ, and one sent by me to the late Mr. Cordeaux contained a good deal of river sand. The reedcutters have told me of seeing them searching the floating "muds" of nearly severed reed, which I have no doubt is explained by the following note:—Mr. W.H. Dikes, having examined three specimens, writes that the crops did not contain a single seed, but, on the contrary, were completely filled with the Succinea amphibia in a perfect state, the shell being unbroken. These shells were closely packed together, the crop of one which was not larger than a hazel-nut containing twenty, and four of Pupa muscorum. (Mag. N.H. iii. p. 239.)

The Bearded Tit is a very early breeder. Booth says: "I have on several occasions seen young birds able to leave the nest by the 4th or 5th of May, and so late as the middle of