OF SELBORNE. 03 



pales, calling it a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot 

 in the very fact ; it proved to be the Sitta Europcea (the 

 nuthatch). Mr. Ray says that the less spotted wood- 



and flying about the top of the cage, and sitting upon the pots upon the 

 ledge, and on a bar to which the roses were tied across the window. 

 At last it began to travel up the creepers against the house, and getting 

 upon the roof it flew over the buildings, and I did not expect to see it 

 again ; but two hours after it returned exceedingly hungry, and lit upon 

 the upper bar of the middle pane of the lower sash of the same window, 

 and pecked hard for admittance. It was let in, and fed-heartily from my 

 hand, after which it took its leave. I saw no more of it for two days, 

 when it returned again for a short visit in very good case, and not appear- 

 ing at all pressed for food. About a week after, it returned to the same 

 pane of glass, pecking as before, but I was occupied with a stranger, on 

 business, and could not attend to it, and it departed for the season. On 

 the 23rd of July, in the following summer, I was standing at the same 

 window, when a fine stout cock of this species lit upon the bar of the 

 same pane close to my face, and began to peck as before for admission. 

 Neither alarmed by my voice, nor my little boy's jumping up from his 

 seat to look at it, it flew down upon some of the cage pans which hap- 

 pened to be on the ledge of the window, and began pecking them as if to 

 get food from them. It quickly departed again. But this is so contrary to 

 the habits of the wild bird, that I consider it quite certain that the bird 

 was my own nursling which had returned after its trip to Africa, to look 

 at the window where it had been reared in its nest. The visit was a 

 very pleasant little incident. How many things, which Europeans in 

 vain desire to see, had my little wanderer witnessed since he last pecked 

 at my window. Perhaps he had sung his plaintive notes near the grave of 

 Clapperton, or peeped into the seraglio of the King of Timbuctoo, since 

 we had parted. 



These little birds are exceedingly gentle till they feed themselves per- 

 fectly ; after which, they become exceedingly quarrelsome. I had some 

 in the same cage with young wood wrens, brown wrens, and sedge 

 warblers. One of them, more than a week before it could feed itself, 

 took to feeding two wood wrens which were ten days older than it, and 

 able to feed themselves, though still very willing to be fed by another. 

 It showed exactly the same discrimination that an old bird does in lean- 

 ing over the one it had last fed, notwithstanding its clamorous entreaties, 

 in order to give the food to the other. No importunities of the brown 

 wrens could obtain a morsel from it. There was sagacity even in this, 

 for the brown wren is a much less nearly allied species, and is now 

 referred to a separate genus. Its own fellow nestlings did not importune 

 it for food. It was a cock bird, and three weeks after it beat the cock 

 wood wren so, that it was necessary to separate them. The wood wrens 

 and sedge warblers are not quarrelsome, but squall very loud when 

 attacked or alarmed. The little brown wrens, as far as I have seen, are 

 not quarrelsome, but perfectly fearless, and very much on the alert to 



