SP. CHAR. Head and neck above, with under part of head and throat, glossy black; forehead, stripe above the eye and band below it, involving the auriculars, white. These stripes embracing between them a black band through the eye and confluent with the black of the head. Above ashy; beneath similar, but paler; the upper part of breast and middle line of belly white. Length about 5 inches; wing, 2.60; tail, 2.40. HAB. Mountain region of Middle and Western United States. [Line drawing: _Parus atricapillus._ 12851] HABITS. The Mountain Chickadee was first met with by Dr. Gambel in journeying westward from Santa Fé, in New Mexico, and from thence was found in all the ranges of the Rocky Mountains nearly to California. Its notes and habits are said to closely resemble those of the common Chickadee, but weaker and more varied. It keeps more in low bushes, where it moves from branch to branch with untiring activity, searching each minutely for small insects. It also frequently descends to the ground to pick up small seeds. While thus occupied it will occasionally stop, look round, and, uttering a slender _te-de-de_, and then its usual note, _to-de-de-dait_, will fly to another bush. On the Rio Colorado they kept chiefly among the cotton-wood trees that grew along its banks, and its familiar notes were almost the only sounds heard. They were observed in large and busy flocks along the smaller streams in company with the Least Tit and the _Reguli_. Dr. Gambel did not find them, however, so abundant on the California sides of the ridge, where other species took their place. Dr. Heermann found this Titmouse abundant among the mountains surrounding the Volcano in the southern mines, and subsequently met with them on the summit of the Tejon Pass. He thinks their notes and habits very similar to those of the _atricapillus_. Dr. Suckley obtained a single specimen at Fort Dalles, but regarded it as extremely rare in that locality. Dr. Woodhouse found it quite abundant in the San Francisco Mountains of New Mexico, where it was feeding among the tall pines in company with kindred species. [Illustration: _Parus montanus._] Mr. Ridgway found this species in great abundance among the pines on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as well as in all the extensive cedar-groves on the mountains to the eastward. Around Carson City this species was found throughout the winter. In its manners and notes, particularly the latter, it was hardly distinguishable from _P. carolinensis_. The notes are described as louder and more distinct, though their calls in spring are rather less clearly articulated. Parus atricapillus, LINN. EASTERN CHICKADEE; BLACK-CAPPED TITMOUSE.