The COLE TIT (_Parus ater_).--The head, neck, and upper breast are black;
the cheeks and nape white. The length of the bird is four inches and a
half, its breadth seven inches. The bill is black, the irides hazel, the
legs are lead-grey; the upper part of the plumage is greyish, the belly
yellowish white. The covers of the secondaries and those above are tipped
with white, forming two bars across the wing. In the female the white on
the cheeks is less extended.
This species is generally spread over the continent of Europe, and is
almost as frequent in Great Britain as the Great Tit or the Blue Tit.
It has been considered by some naturalists to be identical with the
Marsh Tit, but may at once be distinguished from that bird by the white
patch on the nape of the neck, and the white spots on the wing-covers,
which are not to be found on the Marsh Tit at any age. The Cole Tit
frequents woods and plantations, especially those in which oak, birch,
and fir trees are numerous, and may be seen in company with other birds
of similar habits, roving from tree to tree in search of the small
insects and seeds on which they subsist. "In the pine forests of the Dee
and Spey," says Macgillivray, "where very few birds are met with, it
is pleasant to follow a troop of these tiny creatures, as they search
the tree-tops, spreading all round, fluttering and creeping among
the branches, ever in motion, now clinging to a twig in an inverted
position, now hovering over a tuft of leaves, picking in a crevice of the
bark, searching all the boughs, sometimes visiting the lowermost, and
again winding among those at the very tops of the trees. In wandering
among these woods you are attracted by their shrill, _chirping_ notes,
which they continually emit as they flutter among the branches." "In
woodlands," says Mr. Hepburn, "it is common to see it hopping along the
grounds, and uttering its harsh notes, 'If hee!' 'if hee!' It delights to
examine a ditch that has just been cleaned out. I have seen it pull small
earthworms to pieces and devour them."
"It is a matter of curious inquiry," says Gilbert White, "to trace out
how those species of soft-billed birds that continue with us the winter
through, subsist during the dead months. The imbecility of birds seems
not to be the only reason why they shun the rigour of our winters, for
the robust Wry-neck (so much resembling the hardy race of Woodpeckers)
migrates, while the feeble little Golden-crested Wren, that shadow of a
bird, braves our severest frosts without availing himself of houses or
villages, to which most of our birds crowd in distressful seasons, while
he keeps aloof in fields and woods; but perhaps this may be the reason
why they often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird we
know.
"I have no reason to doubt that that the soft-billed birds which winter
with us subsist chiefly on insects in their chrysalis state. All the
species of Wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow streams, near their
spring-heads, where they never freeze; and, by wading, pick out the
chrysalis of the genus of _Phryganeæ_.
"Hedge Sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, where they
pick up crumbs and other sweepings, and in mild weather they procure
worms, which are stirring every month in the year, as any one may see
that will only be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot
on any mild winter's night. Redbreasts and Wrens in the winter haunt
outhouses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and flies, that
have laid themselves up during the cold season. But the grand support
of the soft-billed birds in the winter is that infinite profusion of
chrysalids of the _Lepidoptera ordo_ which is fastened to the twigs of
trees and their trunks, to the poles and walls of gardens and buildings,
and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in
the ground itself.
"Every species of Titmouse winters with us. They have," continues our
author, "what I call an intermediate bill, between the hard and the soft,
between the Linnæan genera of _Fringilla_ and _Motacilla_. One species
alone spends its whole time in the woods and fields, never retreating
for succour, in the severest seasons, to houses and neighbourhoods,
and that is the delicate Long-tailed Titmouse, which is almost as
minute as the Golden-crowned Wren, but the Blue Titmouse or Nun (_Parus
cæruleus_), the Cole Mouse (_Parus ater_), the Great Black-headed
Titmouse (_Fringillago_), and the Marsh Titmouse (_Parus palustris_), all
resort at times to buildings, and in hard weather particularly. The Great
Titmouse, driven by stress of weather, much frequents houses, and in
deep snows I have seen this bird, while it hung with its back downwards
(to my no small delight and admiration) draw straws lengthwise from out
the eaves of thatched houses, in order to pull out the flies that were
concealed between them, and that in such numbers that they quite defaced
the thatch, and gave it a ragged appearance.
"The Blue Titmouse, or Nun, is a great frequenter of houses, and a
general devourer. Besides insects, it is very fond of flesh, for it
frequently picks bones on dunghills. It is a vast admirer of suet,
and haunts butchers' shops. It will also pick holes in apples left on
the ground, and be well entertained with the seeds on the head of a
sunflower. The Blue Marsh and Great Titmice will, in very severe weather,
carry away barley and oat-straws from the sides of ricks.
"How the Wheat-ear and Whin-chat support themselves in winter cannot
be so easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild heaths
and warrens, the former especially where there are stone-quarries. Most
probable it is that their maintenance arises from the aurelia of the
_Lepidoptera ordo_, which furnish them with a plentiful table in the
wilderness."
"That some guess may be formed of the possible extent of good or evil
occasioned by small birds," says Bishop Stanley, "we annex the result of
our own observations on the precise quantity of food consumed by certain
species, either for their own support or that of their young, remarking
at the same time that the difference observed in the instances may be
partly accounted for by the different quantity of food required by young
birds at different periods of their growth.
"Sparrows feed their young thirty-six times in an hour, which,
calculating at the rate of fourteen hours a day, in the long days of
spring and summer, gives 3,500 times per week, a number corroborated
on the authority of another writer, who calculated the number of
caterpillars destroyed in a week to be about 3,400.
"Redstarts were observed to feed their young with little green grubs
from gooseberry-trees twenty-three times in an hour, which, at the same
calculation, amounts to 2,254 times in a week, but more grubs than one
were usually imported each time.
"Chaffinches at the rate of about thirty-five times an hour for five or
six times together, when they would pause, and not return for intervals
of eight or ten minutes; the food was green caterpillars.
"The Titmouse sixteen times in an hour.
"The comparative weight consumed was as follows:--
"A Greenfinch, provided with eighty grains by weight of wheat, in
twenty-four hours consumed seventy-nine; but of a thick paste, made of
flour, eggs, &c., it consumed upwards of one hundred grains.
"A Goldfinch consumed about ninety grains of Canary seed in twenty-four
hours.
[Illustration: THE GREAT TIT (_Parus major_).]
"Sixteen Canaries consumed at the average rate of one hundred grains each
in twenty-four hours.
"The consumption of food by these birds, compared with the weight of
their bodies, was about one-sixth; which, supposing a man to consume food
in the same proportion to his weight, would amount to about twenty-five
pounds for every twenty-four hours."
The nest, which is formed of moss and wool, lined with hair, is placed in
a hole in a wall, or the hollow of a tree, or sometimes on the ground, in
cavities among the exposed roots, at the mouth of some burrow. The eggs
are from six to eight in number, and are white, spotted with pale red.
* * * * *
The BLUE TITS represent a group that have been separated from those
mentioned above on account of the unusual shortness of their much-curved
beak and the peculiar coloration of their plumage.