THROUGH THE YEAR 167 



leaves, we can see none. The forms of insect life 

 which feed a goldcrest or a tree creeper are minute 

 as the eggs and the new-hatched grubs of the 

 microlepidoptera, the families of the tortrices and 

 tineae, lovely little moths that sometimes swarm 

 in the summer oaks and other trees. Thus, there 

 is one little exquisite, the silver-barred pigmy (with 

 an important Latin name, Nepticula aurella !). 

 This mothlet itself is scarcely the size of two pins' 

 heads set side by side ; whilst its caterpillar, when 

 fresh from the egg, must be much smaller. But a 

 grub of the silver-barred pigmy would be a big 

 helping for a goldcrest. The mites which the gold- 

 crest finds on the twig tips and loosening leaves of 

 the birch tree a hundred or more mites, perhaps, 

 at each visit he pays to the tree are minuter 

 than a pigmy's fresh-hatched grub or fresh-laid egg. 



When within a few yards of the busy goldcrest, 

 we see that in the birch tree he often gets his mite of 

 food off the leaf or twig hovering. He is perched on 

 a twig under the leaf, looks up, spies the atom of 

 food whatever it may be, and swift as thought is in 

 the air, and, hanging there less than a moment, 

 has secured it. 



He whips off to another twig, and picks up an 

 insect whilst he is perched ; but he has scarcely 

 seized this second atom ere he has spied a third on 

 a leaf or the lower part of a twig out of reach, and is 

 hovering again. Watch a goldcrest for five minutes 

 in November in a birch tree where there is plenty of 

 insect food, and you may see him hover twenty 



