OF SELBORNE. 127 



every month in the year, as any one may see that will 

 be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any 

 mild winter's night. Redbreasts 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 Ordo Lepi- 

 doptera, 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 of Fringilla, and Mo- 

 tacilla. One species alone spends its whole time in the 

 woods and fields, never retreating for succour in the se- 

 verest 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 cceruleus] , the colemouse (Parus ater) , the great 

 black -headed titmouse (Fringillago'], 1 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 

 mousetraps, baited with tallow or suet. It will also pick 

 holes in apples left on the ground, and be well entertained 



Parus major i LIMN. 



