84 NATURAL HISTORY OP 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 

 aurelia 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 

 Linnsean genera ofFringilla 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 js almost as minute as the golden-crowned 

 wren; but the blue titmouse or nun (Parus cceruleus), the cole-mouse 

 (Parus cuter), 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. 

 It will also pick holes in apples left on the ground, and be well enter- 

 tained with the seeds on the head of a sun-flower. The blue, marsh, 

 and great titmice will, in very severe weather, carry away barley and 

 oat-straws from the sides of ricks. 



How the wheat-ear and whin-chat support themselves in winter 

 cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild 

 heaths and warrens; the former especially, where there are stone 

 quarries : most probably it is that their maintenance arises from the 

 aureliae of the Lepidoptera ordo, which furnish them with a plentiful 

 table in the wilderness, t 1 am, &c. 



* See Letter XXXIX., and note. 



