150 The Natural History of Se I borne 



freeze ; and, by wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus of 

 Phryganece* &c. 



Hedge-sparrows frequent sinks and gutters in hard weather, 

 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 out-houses, 

 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 pro- 

 fusion of aureliae of the Lepidoplera 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 Motacilla. 

 One species alone spends its whole time in the woods and 

 fields, never retreating for succour in the severest seasons 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 ccerukns\ 

 the cole-mouse (Parus ater], the great black-headed titmouse 

 (Fringillago')^ and the marsh titmouse (Parus palustris), all 

 resort at times to buildings, and in hard weather particularly. 

 The great titmouse, driven by stress of weather, much fre- 

 quents houses; and, in deep snows, I have seen this bird, 

 while it hung with its back downwards (to my no small delight 

 and admiration), draw straws lengthwise from out the eaves 

 of thatched houses, in order to pull out the flies that were 

 concealed between them, and that in such numbers that they 

 quite defaced the thatch, and gave it a ragged appearance. 



The blue titmouse, or nun, is a great frequenter of houses, 



* See Derham's " Physico-theology," p. 235. 



1 This bird is no doubt the Parus mijor of Linrueus, the great tit or 

 black-headed tit of most British authors. ED. 



