I have been much interested this spring at witnessing in two or
three instances the tenacity with which the Marsh Titmouse sits on
its nest. Being in a wood near my own house, I perceived a pair of
these birds in one of the trees, and having seen them in the same
place several times before, and being desirous of finding the
nest, I sat down to watch their motions. After examining me on all
sides with much chattering and many gesticulations, indicative of
dislike and suspicion, the female flew to the root of a tree,
three or four yards off, and disappeared, as she had gone to the
opposite side of the tree to that on which I sat; and as there
were several holes about the root I was at a loss to know in which
the nest was built, and began to strike the root with a stick,
expecting her to fly out, but nothing appeared. I then examined
the holes one by one, and whilst doing so heard her hissing and
puffing from within, in such a way that if I had not known she was
there I should have thought it was a snake rather than a bird.
However, as she would not come out, and the hole was so small that
I could not get my hand in, I was obliged to raise the siege until
next morning, when I returned armed with a hammer and chisel with
which to storm her citadel. As the wood was sound, the hole small,
and the nest six or eight inches within the tree, I was five or
ten minutes before I could get to it, during which I gave her
repeated opportunities of escaping if she chose; but she still sat
on her nest, puffing and pecking at the stick that I thrust in in
order to drive her off. She at last crept to the further edge of
the nest, which I then took out, as I wanted it for one of my
friends who is a collector of eggs, but on attempting to blow one
I found they had been sat upon too long, and I then felt desirous
of seeing whether the old bird would hatch them after having her
nest torn from under her, and I turned back to the tree whence I
had taken them, and found her still sitting in the hole where I
had left her. I regret to add that the humane part of my
experiment did not succeed, for although she remained after I had
returned the nest to its place, she left it immediately after, and
did not return to it again.
Another instance which I witnessed was in a nest containing young
ones. This was also at the root of a tree, but the situation did
not appear to be so well chosen as is usually the case with the
Titmouse tribe; for in this instance the hole went quite through
the tree, and on one side was large enough to admit the hand. As
the young ones were exposed to the weather, and were also liable
to be seen by anyone going along the adjoining footpath, I
attempted to remedy this defect by covering the larger hole with a
sod, which to a casual observer would appear to have grown there.
On taking the sod off one day, to see how the nestlings were going
on, I perceived that a clod of earth had fallen from the sod upon
them, and I took a stick and hooked it out, lest it should smother
them. Whilst I was doing this I perceived the old one sat on the
further side of the nest, so still and quiet that until I
perceived her eye I fancied she was dead; and she also endured
several pokings with the stick before she would move, although the
hole on the opposite side of the tree enabled her to escape
whenever she thought proper.
Perhaps Mr. Rennie, in his next edition of Montagu's Dictionary,
will give us a new name for this bird, as the one it has at
present is no more applicable to this species than it is to the
_Parus caeruleus_, or the _Parus major_, and not half so much so
as it would be to the _Parus biarnicus_; and he has changed good
names into bad ones with far less reason, witness _Corvus
frugilegus_ into _Corvus predatorius_. The former name is strictly
applicable to that species, and to that alone; and so useful a
bird does not deserve the name of a thief. The Chaffinch (which
received its name of _Coelebs_ from Linnaeus on account of the
males alone remaining in Sweden in the winter, which fact is
corroborated by White, who found scarcely any but females in
Hampshire during that season) has had its name changed by Mr.
Rennie into _Spiza_. The old name is characteristic of a
remarkable fact in the habits of this bird; why the new one is
more appropriate (neither understanding Greek, nor having read
Aristotle), I cannot say. Will Mr. Rennie condescend to enlighten
me?
Once for all--if we are to have a new nomenclature, let a
committee of able naturalists decide upon it, or let us submit to
the authority of a master (for instance Linnaeus or Temminck), but
don't let every bookmaker who publishes a work on Natural History,
rejecting names long established and universally received, give
new ones in such a way as serves only to show his own presumption
and to confuse what it ought to be his business to elucidate.
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