Their notes are said to be less sonorous and less frequent than those of our Black-capped Titmouse. In the winter a portion retire from the coast in South Carolina into the interior of the State and into Florida, where Mr. Audubon found them, in the winter of 1831 and 1832, much more abundant than he had ever seen them elsewhere. He found them breeding as early as February, occasionally in the nests deserted by the Brown-headed Nuthatch. A nest obtained by Dr. Bachman from a hollow stump, about four feet from the ground, was in form cup-shaped, measuring two inches internally in diameter at the mouth, and three externally, with a depth of two inches. It was constructed of cotton, fine wool, a few fibres of plants, and so elaborately felted together as to be of uniform thickness throughout. Mr. Audubon was in error in regard to the eggs, which he describes as pure white. Their ground-color is of pure crystalline whiteness, but they are freely and boldly marked all over with deep reddish-brown and red spots. These, so far as we have compared the eggs, are larger, more numerous, and more deeply marked than are any eggs of the _atricapillus_ we have ever met with. According to the observations of the late Dr. Alexander Gerhardt of Whitfield County, Georgia, these birds usually breed in holes that have been previously dug out by the _Picus pubescens_, or in decaying stumps not more than five or six feet from the ground. He never met with its nest in living trees. The eggs are from five to seven in number, and are usually deposited in Georgia from the 10th to the last of April. The eggs of this species are slightly larger than those of the _atricapillus_, and the reddish-brown blotches with which they are profusely covered are much more distinctly marked. They are of a spheroidal oval in shape, have a pure white ground, very uniformly and generally sprinkled with blotches of a reddish-brown. They measure .60 by .50 of an inch. Parus rufescens, TOWNS. CHESTNUT-BACKED CHICKADEE. _Parus rufescens_, TOWNSEND, J. A. N. Sc. Phil. VII, II, 1837, 190.—AUD. Orn. Biog. IV, 1838, 371, pl. cccliii.—IB. Birds Am. 1841, 158, pl. cxxix.—BAIRD, Birds N. Am. 1858, 394; Review, 83.—COOPER & SUCKLEY, P. R. R. Rep. XII, II, 1859, 194 (nesting).—SCLATER, Catal. 1861, 14, no. 86.—DALL & BANNISTER (Alaska).—COOPER, Birds Cal. 1, 47. _Pœcile rufescens_, BONAP. Consp. 1850, 230. SP. CHAR. Whole head and neck above, and throat from bill to upper part of breast, sooty blackish-brown. Sides of head and neck, upper part of breast, and middle of body, white; back and sides dark brownish-chestnut. Length, 4.75 inches; wing, 2.36; tail, 2.16. HAB. Western United States, near Pacific coast.