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PARUS CÆRULEUS .
Blue Tit.
Partis ceeruleus, Linn. Syst. Nat., tom. i. p. 341.
Cyanistes ceeruleus, Kaup, Naturl. Syst., p. 99.
W h en a bird is so generally distributed over the British Islands that it is known to every school-boy,
what can I say respecting it which has not been related before? Hackneyed descriptions become
tiring to the reader, if incessantly repeated; while the presence o f the little favourites themselves is
always acceptable. Of these no one is better known or more welcome than the Blue Tit, which
during the summer visits our gardens and rose-trees in search o f the insects ensconced within the
upcurled leaves, and which in winter, when the hoar frost puts it to certain straits, taps at our windows
for a solitary sped house-fly o r other insect on the inner side of the glass, or to solicit alms in the shape
o f crumbs o r a picked bone. The child of the warm hearth within, naturally desirous o f possessing it,
sets his brick-trap on the snow; and the poor bird falls into the snare. Then comes the peck from its
little sharp bill, and its flurry to escape, which perhaps it effects, with the loss of its tail. When the
boy grows up to manhood, such desires no longer exist, and he now admires the bird in its freedom,
and very properly affords it his protection for its good services.
Although I have spoken so highly o f the Blue Tit, I fear my meed o f praise must be qualified; for
however pretty and interesting he may be, and great as may be the good he effects in the destruction of
insect-life, on the other hand a grave offence is laid to his charge—that o f pecking holes in our ripening
apples and pears, when, the skin being broken, the wasp soon completes the destruction he has commenced.
This is a serious m atter; and it does not lessen the offence of the Blue Tit when I say that such
conduct is common to all its brethren. This bird also, and indeed all the Tits, occasionally resorts in winter
and early spring to the entrances o f bee-hives, and carries off such o f the insects as may have been
induced by a sunny morning to come forth to seek for any opening flower.
That every bird has its own particular area, more limited with some than with others, must be well
known. Europe generally is the portion o f the globe where the Blue T it is destined to dwell. And here,
again, I must make use o f the term “ generally distributed; ” for whether it be the countries of the south washed
by the Mediterranean, or those bordering the Baltic in the north, the bird is a denizen o f them a ll: on the
one hand, it crosses the border-line to Sweden, Norway, and Finland, as far as the 63rd degree o f north
latitude; on the other hand, I have no evidence that, like so many other European birds, it ever crosses
the Mediterranean to North Africa, its place there being supplied by the Parits tiltramarinus.
As spring advances, the Blue T it becomes pert and lively, and by its busy actions and flittings to and fro
soon betrays the site it has selected for its intended n e s t: this may be a hole in a stunted willow, apple, or
other tree, a split in the gate-post, a crack in the neighbouring wall, the spout o f the garden-pump, or an
inverted flower-pot. Wherever it may be, the nest is commenced in April; and if left undisturbed, a numerous
progeny fly off to the branches o f the neighbouring trees, in the following month, and leave the parents
a yet long summer to repeat the process and rear a second brood. Now come into play its useful qualities;
for the number of caterpillars and perfect insects taken by a brood of ten or twelve young Tits is enormous.
Mr. Weir communicated to M r. Macgillivray his observations on the feeding of the young in the nest, between
a quarter past two in the morning and half past eight in the evening, and found that they do so in that
period four hundred and seventy-five times, each time bringing one caterpillar, at others two or th re e ; so
that probably this one pair of birds destroyed six or seven hundred in the course o f a single day. After
such a statement as this, must we not be surprised how any one can question the usefulness o f these little
birds ? for I can easily imagine that, but for them and other allied species, we should be so overrun by
insects that the consequences would be frightful to contemplate. If our little birds are let alone, a proper
balance between bird- and insect-life will be kept up, with a highly, beneficial re su lt; and I cannot but believe
that darkness reigned over that parish whose churchwardens’ account contained an item for seventeen dozen
tomtits’ heads.
When insect-food becomes scarce, the bird may frequently be seen carrying about in its bill the seed of
some tree, or a stone o f the wild cherry, which it ultimately holds firmly between its toes on the horizontal
branch of a tree, or places in a chink or interstice o f the bark, and hammers at it with its little bill and all
its might until a hole .is made and the kernel reached. This hammering noise may often be heard in the
woods; for it is made by all the Tits, as well as the more powerful Nut-hatch.