The breast of the female is lighter and bluish grey; she has also more brown spots on her head.
Habitation.—When wild it is found all over Europe, making its abode in thick deep forests. It is with us a bird of passage; but some individuals, which come from quite the north, remain during the winter near our dwellings, searching the heaps of wood and stones, the hedges and fences, and, like the wren, entering barns and stables. Those which leave us return at the end of March, stop for some time in the hedges, and then penetrate into the woods.
In confinement this bird is so wakeful and gay that it may be safely left at liberty in the room, having a roosting-place for the night; it is also kept in a cage.
THE BEARDED TIT.
Food.—When wild, the great variety of things which serve it for food prevent its ever being at a loss throughout the year. It is equally fond of small insects and worms and small seeds. In spring it feeds on flies, caterpillars, grubs, and maggots, which it seeks for in the hedges, bushes, and in the earth. In summer it feeds chiefly on caterpillars; in autumn on seeds of all kinds and elderberries; and in winter, when the snow has covered all seeds, it has recourse to insects hid in the cracks and crevices of walls and trees.
In confinement it will eat anything that comes to table. It is fond of the universal paste, hemp, rape, and poppy-seeds, and refuses none of these things immediately on being imprisoned, and it soon seems as completely at ease as if accustomed to confinement[91].
Breeding.—This species lays generally twice a year; placing its nest among the thickest bushes, about five or six feet from the ground; the outside is composed of mosses, and fibres of roots, and wood, and the inside is lined with the fur of deer, hares, and the like. The eggs, five or six in number, are bright bluish green. The young are no sooner fledged than, like the preceding, they quit the nest. Their plumage is then very different from that of their parents: the breast is spotted with grey and yellow, the back with brown and black; lastly, the nostrils and angles of the beak are rose-coloured. They are easily reared on white bread and poppy-seeds moistened with milk. As soon as they are tamed these birds have a great inclination to build in the room. The male and female collect all the little straws, threads, and similar materials which they can find, to build a nest among the boughs with which they are supplied for the purpose. The female lays even when solitary; they may be paired with red-breasts, and these unions succeed very well.
Diseases.—If it were generally true, that birds in a wild state are never ill, this species must be excepted; for, however strange it may appear, the young are subject to the small pox; they are attacked by it while in the nest, or even after they can fly. I have a young bird of this kind, which, at a time when this disease prevailed in my neighbourhood, took it; he recovered, however, tolerably well, but he entirely lost the tail-feathers, which were never afterwards renewed. Old ones are sometimes caught or killed whose feet and eyes are ulcerated, or have tumours on them; perhaps they may be only chilblains. Weavers’ stoves appear to be particularly injurious to these birds; in two or three months their eyes swell, and the feathers fall off all round them; the beak is attacked with scurvy, which spreads to the feet, then all over the body; but they nevertheless continue to live from eight to ten years in these rooms.
Mode of Taking.—This is very easy at their return in the spring. As soon as they appear in the hedges, where they soon discover themselves by the cry “issri,” a little place near, where the earth is bare, must be found; after having placed limed twigs, and thrown among them earth or meal worms for a bait, the dunnock is gently driven towards them without alarming him; as soon as he perceives the worms he darts upon them and falls into the snare. In the autumn they may be caught in the area and with a noose; in winter in the white-throat’s trap; but they resort in the greatest numbers to the water trap, not so much for the sake of bathing as to seek for dead insects or decayed roots.