OF 8ELB0ENE, 
127 
every montli in the year, as any one may see tliat will only 
be at the trouble of taking a candle to a grass-plot on any 
TQild winter's night. Redbreasts and wrens in the winter 
haunt out-houseSj 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 
[Farus cceruleus) , the colemouse [Parus ater) , 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 
mousetraps, baited with tallow or suet. It will also pick 
holes in apples left on the ground, and be well entertained 
Parus major, TasN. 
