200 SOFT-BILLED BIBD9. 



I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds 

 which winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their 

 aurelia state.* All the species of wagtails in severe weather 

 haunt shallow streams, near their spring-heads, where they 

 never freeze ; and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the 

 genus o? p'hrygane(je,-\ &c. 



Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard wea- 

 ther, where they pick up crumbs and other sweepings ; and 

 in mild weather they procure worms, which are stirring every 

 month in the year, as any one may see that will only be at 

 the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any mild 

 winter's night. Red-breasts and wrens, in the winter, haunt 

 outhouses, stables, and barns, where they find spiders and 

 flies that have laid themselves up during the cold season. 

 But the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter, is 

 that infinite profusion of aurelise of the lepidoptera ordo'^ 

 which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks, to 

 the pales and walls of gardens and buildings, and is found in 

 every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the 

 ground itself. 



Every species of titmouse winters with us. They have 

 what I call a kind of intermediate bill, between the hard and 

 the soft, between the Linnsean genera of fringilla and mota- 

 cilla. One species alone spends its whole time in the woods 

 and fields, never retreating for succour, in the severest sea- 

 sons, to houses and neighbourhoods, — and that is the delicate 

 long-tailed titmouse, which is almost as minute as the golden- 

 crowned wren ; but the blue titmouse, or nun (parus cceru- 

 leus), the cole-mouse (parus ater), the great black-headed 

 titmouse {fringillago), and the marsh titmouse (parus palus- 

 tris), all resort, at times, to buildings, and in hard weather 

 particularly. The great titmouse, driven by stress of wea- 

 ther, much frequents houses ; and, in deep snows, I have 

 seen this bird, while it hung with its back downwards (to 



* It is an interesting fact, as showing the care of the great Creator for his crea- 

 tures, tliat the berries of the misseltoe only ripen in the spring, when the hips, 

 haws, the berries of hollies and ivy have generally disappeared. Thus in a 

 prolonged winter many birds are kept from starving by means of the misseltoe, 

 which I never knew them to feed on till about the end of February or early 

 iu March. — Ed. 



+ See Dekham's Physico-TJceology, p. 235. 



