84 
NATURAL HISTOEY OF SELBOENE. 
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. Eed-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 
Linnaean genera of Fringilla 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 is almost as minute as the golden-crowned 
wren ; but the blue titmouse or nun ( Parus ccerideus), the cole-mouse 
{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 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-strav/s 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 
aurelige of the Lepidoptera ordo, which furnish them with a plentiful 
table in the wilderness, f 1 am, &c. 
* See Letter XXXIX., and note. 
