THE GOLD- CROWNED KINGLET. 65 



is about ten days after, the males are almost silent till the 

 dusk of the evening, when they are incessantly crying, 

 possibly to decoy the larger species of grasshoppers, which 

 begin their chirpings with the setting sun. Selby says that 

 the nest of this bird is composed of moss, and the dried 

 stems of the ladies bed-straw, and bears a great resem- 

 blance to that of the Petty chaps, or the Whitethroat, 

 though it is thicker and more compact in texture. The 

 eggs are four or five in number, of a pinkish grey, with 

 numerous specks of a deeper tint. The young, when dis- 

 turbed, immediately quit the nest, although but half Hedged, 

 trusting, doubtless, to their instinctive power of conceal- 

 ment. Montagu describes the eggs as of a spotless blueish 

 white, but he probably mistook them for those of some 

 other bird, for Yarrell says that they are of a pale reddish 

 white, freckled over with darker red ; he has seen five or 

 six sets, and they did not differ in colour. The bird 

 sometimes lays as many as seven eggs. 



White gives us a pretty picture of the habits of this 

 little bird, saying 



Nothing can be more amusing than its whisper, which seems to 

 be close by, though at a hundred yards distance, and when close to 

 your ear is scarce any louder than when a great way off. Had I not 

 been a little acquainted with insects, and known that the grasshopper 

 kind is not yet hatched, I should have hardly believed but that it 

 had been a locusta whispering in the bushes. The country people 

 laugh when you tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most 

 willful creature, skulking in the thickest part of a bush, and will sing 

 at a yard distant, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a per- 

 son to go on the. other side where it haunted ; but then it would run, 

 creeping like a mouse before us, for a hundred yards together, 

 through the bottom of the thorns ; yet it would not come into fair 

 sight ; but on a morning early, and when undisturbed, it sings on the 

 top of a twig, gaping and shivering with its wings. 



THE GOLD-CROWNED KINGLET (Regulus auricapillus), 

 commonly called the Golden- crested Wren, sometimes the 

 Tidley Goldfinch, or Mary gold Finch. This is the smallest 

 of British birds, its weight being less than a dram and 

 a half; but it is one of the most active, and endures the 

 winter better than very many of the larger kinds. It 







