148 The Natural History of Selborne 



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 

 profusion of aureliae 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 Linnaean 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 

 c<eruleus\ 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 frequents 

 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, and a 

 general devourer. Besides insects, it is very fond of flesh ; for it 

 frequently picks bones on dunghills : it is a vast admirer of suet, and 

 haunts butchers' shops. When a boy, I have known twenty in a 

 morning caught with snap mouse-traps, baited with tallow or suet. 



1 This bird is no doubt the Parus major of Linnaeus, the great tit or black- 

 headed tit of most British authors. ED. 



