File:The birds of Britain - their distribution and habits (1916) (14752224121).jpg

Identifier: birdsofbritainth00evan (find matches)
Title: The birds of Britain : their distribution and habits
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Evans, Arthur Humble, 1872-
Subjects: Birds -- Great Britain
Publisher: Cambridge : University Press
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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tly distinguished from its congenersby the broad black stripe down the yellowish underparts, though its black head and white cheeks are mostconspicuous. In different forms it breeds south of theArctic circle to the Mediterranean Islands, north-westAfrica, Palestine, Persia, Burma, China, and Japan,while the British form has recently been separated fromthe others. It makes a nest of moss, surmounted bya felted mass of wool, fur and hair, in a hole in a treeor waU, when it does not choose a pump, a woodenletter-box, or other extraordinary situation. Its notesare comparatively harsh, and a rasping cry of tworepeated notes which it often utters is commonlymistaken for that of the Chiffchaff; it also imitates thevoices of other birds. The Great Tit is no doubt guiltyof spoiling many fruit-buds, which may or may not Passe rrs \7 contain harmful insects ; it also eats peas, nuts, andseeds to some extent, and is always attracted by meat-bones, suet, cocoa-nuts and tlie like, hung up for it in
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Coal Tit winter. Occasionally it will even murder another bird,but insects are its staple food. The Coal Titmouse (P. ater britannicus), a smallerspecies with no black stripe down the breast, has thenape-patch as well as the cheeks white ; it does not 48 Order I breed in the Orkneys or Shetlands and abroad isrepresented by P. ater, with grey in place of olive back.Specimens, however, which many people think indis-tinguishable from the latter, are found breeding inScotland, and the Irish bird, with a yellow rather thana whitish breast, has been lately separated ; the truthbeing that it is difficult to draw the line between formsso closely related. The call-note of the Coal Tit is sharpand loud, so that it cannot easily be mistaken for thoseof its congeners; the nest resembles that of the GreatTit, but is usually placed in a hole in a wall or stumpor in the ground, less commonly in a bank-side or thethatch of a shed. The bird is not so fond of an artificialnesting-box as the Great and B

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