GOLD-CRESTED REGULUS. 199 



Sir. Wm. Jardine too, writing from Dumfries-shire, speaks of 

 ". the time of migration, about November, when our accession of 

 numbers arrives," B. B. vol. ii. p. 157. 



The gold-crested regulus seems not to be the hardy bird that 

 authors generally imagine. In the north of Ireland it has fre- 

 quently been found dead about the hedges, not only in severe 

 weather, but after slight frosts.* To the green-houses and hot- 

 houses in the garden of a relative near Belfast, these birds resorted 

 so regularly in the mild winter of 1831-32, that some were cap- 

 tured weekly throughout the season, and taken to one of our bird- 

 preservers : on the rere-wall of the houses is a range of sheds 

 accessible to birds, and dense plantations of trees and evergreen 

 shrubs are quite contiguous. They were occasionally caught 

 at all seasons, as were common wrens and titmice — many 

 of both — together with robins, sparrows, and chaffinches. All 

 these birds, except the robin, were cruelly sacrificed by the 

 ignorant gardener for their intrusion into the houses, though 

 by the destruction of insects they must have been eminently 

 serviceable to the plants under his charge. Winter too, being 

 the chief season of their visits, they could, even if so dis- 

 posed, do little or no injury. Early in the winter of 1835, three 

 of these birds, which had been captured by a cat in a small gar- 

 den, in a very populous part of Belfast, were brought to me, and 

 on the preceding day, four or five had in the same place shared a 

 similar fate. In the middle of December, 1846, after a few days 

 of frost and snow, I observed a regulus fly from a plantation at 

 the road-side several times, and alight at the base of the demesne 

 wall bounding the foot-way on which I walked. That done, it 

 ascended the wall, picking for insects like a creeper [Certhia fami- 

 liaris), but less continuously than that species. I was several 

 times within two or three feet of the bird, and had I been so cruel, 

 could have killed it with my walking-stick. 



Of five stomachs of the regulus which have come under my 

 inspection in the months of December, January and May, four 



* In a note to White's Selborne (p. 180, ed. 1837), Mr. Herbert gives instances of 

 the fatal effect of cold on caged individuals. 



