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FAMILY PARIDÆ: NUTHATCHES AND TITMICE.

Sub-family Parinæ: Titmice.

Tufted Titmouse: Parus bicolor.

Length: 6-6.50 inches.

Male and Female: Crested, with black spot on brow at base of crest. Above ash-gray, wings and tail darker. Sides of head dull white. Under parts whitish with brownish wash sides. Bill, lead-black, feet lead-colour.

Song: A persistent whistle, which Mr. Nehrling translates as "Hee-dle-dee-dle-dee-dle-dee," and at other times "Peto-peto-peto-daytee-daytee!".

Season: Staggling to southern New England in early April or May in company with many of the Warblers.

Breeds: In all parts of range.

Nest: Sometimes in bird-boxes, otherwise in the abandoned holes of Woodpeckers, etc., lined with hair and feathers.

Eggs: 6-8, white, spotted with reddish-brown and lilac.

Range: Eastern United States to the Plains, but rare towards the northern border, being a straggler merely to southern New England.

The Tufted Titmouse is quite rare here, but is a summer and, perhaps, winter resident in southern New York; and whenever it is seen, it is sure to be recognized.

In shape it has all the jaunty pertness of the Blue Jay, but with an added air of confidence and sociability. During the winter they travel about in flocks searching for food, and when insects fail they content themselves with nuts and hard seeds which crack readily, after the fashion of the Nuthatches. They pair in April, and Mr. Nehrling says that they grow silent as the nesting time approaches, and very stealthy in their movements; a pair occupied a Bluebird house, which he had placed on the edge of the woods near his home in Texas, and then shifted to a Wren box to raise the second brood.

Montague Chamberlain, who heard these Titmice singing in the South in January, thinks that their song sometimes takes the high key of the Baltimore Oriole, and that among other colloquial expressions they frequently said, "Whip-

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