Regulus — Rubecida — Ruticilla 1 5 5 



The Trochilus is smallest of all birds, with a long taiP 

 always cocked up, and a bill somewhat long but very slender, 

 it is nearly reddish-brown in colour. The nest it makes is 

 outwardly of moss and inwardly of feathers, wool, or down, 

 but mainly of feathers. The nest has the form of an upright 

 egg standing on one of its ends, while in the middle of one 

 side there is a little postern as it were, by which the bird 

 goes in and out. It sometimes builds its nest at the back 

 of a house or in sheds thatched with straw, but usually in 

 woods. It also is a bird that roves alone, and never flies 

 in flocks ; nay more, so often as it meets another of its 

 kind it forthwith declares war, and fights. Wherefore the 

 birds with plumes of gold-colour that they wear on their 

 heads like golden crowns, which pass the summer in 

 Bavaria in woods, and in the winter flock to towns, are 

 not the Reguli of Aristotle, as I presently shall prove, but 

 the Tyranni. 



Of the RuBecula and the Ruticilla. 



'EpidaKo<;, rj ipidia, rubecula, in English a robin redbreste, 

 in German eyn rotbrust or eyn rotkelchen. 



^oiviKovpo^, and, as another text has it, (jjoivtKovpyo^, in 

 Pliny phoenicurus, the ruticilla of Gaza, in English a rede tale, 

 in German eyn rotstertz. 



Aristotle. 



The Rubecula and the Ruticilla feed on worms. 

 Rubeculse and Ruticillae, as the birds are called, change 

 into one another, and what in winter is the Rubecula 

 in summer is the Ruticilla^ while they hardly differ 

 from each other save in colour of the breast and tail. 



1 Turner evidently means the Wren ( Ti-oglodytes parvulus), but with 

 this the ' long tail ' does not agree ; perhaps there is a misprint. 



'' As Sundevall remarks, Aristotle probably only meant that the Red- 

 start was called (fjoiviKovpos in summer and ipldaKos in winter. Sundevall 

 ascribes the misinterpretation to Gaza, whose work Turner admittedly 

 used. This is the more likely as the section of Aristotle quoted concerns 

 birds which change their plumage and note at different seasons. 



