[Illustration: BEARDED REEDLING _Panurus biarmicus_]
The general colour above is tawny orange, the secondaries are striped with rufous buff and black, the tail is long, wedge-shaped, and of the same colour as the back. Chin and throat whitish, becoming pinker on the breast and passing into tawny brown on the flanks; under-tail coverts black. The male has the crown of the head a delicate grey and a black moustache of elongated feathers running downwards from the lores and beneath the eye. In the females this moustache is wanting and the crown of the head is brown, but otherwise they resemble the male. The young differ from the female in having the crown and back striped with black. Length 6·75 in.; wing 2·25 in.
THE LONG-TAILED TIT Acredula caudata (Linnæus)
There must be few of us who have not noticed this charming little bird when we are walking in winter along a hedgerow. We are attracted by a high-pitched "zi-zit" as the bird darts from the hedge in front of us, and after a few yards of undulating flight settles again. It is not alone, for another and yet another Tit follows till the whole family party are busy at work hopping and creeping about the hedge. Shortly the whole proceeding takes place again, the family procession moving on to search for food in a new spot. All this goes on daily during the winter months; up one hedgerow, down another; now hopping up a tree, occasionally visiting a small wood, ever on the move, and ever restless, till the evening comes, when the little party gather to rest, sitting close to each other on some slender bough.
In April, however, this roving life ends. The cock bird seeks a mate and they proceed to make a summer home, sometimes in an open hedgerow, but more often in the hedge bordering a wood, or in some isolated bush in the wood itself. It would be difficult to imagine anything more beautiful than their nest, which is perhaps the most elaborate of any of our British Birds! It is a solid thick-walled elliptical mass of felted moss completely covered externally with lichens, which are largely interwoven by means of cobwebs. The entrance, for it is entirely covered in, is towards the upper end, and the interior is lined with horsehair and innumerable feathers, as many as seven hundred having been counted in a single nest.