VLEK R (2013) A nest of Penduline Tit Remiz pendulinus from the Netherlands in the 17th century. LIMOSA 86 (1): 20-24.

In the summer of 1663 the French physicist, diplomat and magistrate Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665) toured through the southern and northern Netherlands. In The Hague he vistited a Monsieur de Zulcon, Lord of Zuilichem, a castle and a village near Zaltbommel at the river Waal (51.48N, 5.07E). Monsieur de Zulcon was in fact the Dutch statesman Constantijn Huygens jr. (1628-1697), who bore this gentry name because his father had owned the castle at Zuilichem since 1630. Huygens jr. was the brother of famous Dutch physicist and astronomer Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695). On August 8th, Huygens showed De Monconys a nest of a bird species unknown to him. It was made of willow blossom- fluff, “so artificially constructed that it surpassed the work of knitters of stockings in softness and thickness”. The nest, which had been found at Zuilichem, hanging at the end of a willow branch, had the shape of a wooden shoe, with one opening quite small in proportion to its volume. The description by De Monconys (1666) fits only a nest of Penduline Tit, ready for use or probably having been used for breeding. Apparently Penduline Tit's nests were not rare near Zuilichem, as Huygens promised De Monconys another such nest. This is the first documentation of Penduline Tit nesting in The Netherlands, 300 years earlier than an unfinished nest found in western Noord-Brabant province in 1962. Moreover, it is only the eighth documented case of breeding of Penduline Tit in European ornithology and the third nest description after those of Magnus (c. 1275) and Aldrovandi (1600). At that time it was also the most Northwestern European nesting record of this species, the other early breeding documentation being from France, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Poland..

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