110 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
fields and woods ; but perhaps this may be the reason why they 
may often perish, and why they are almost as rare as any bird 
we know.* 
I have no reason to doubt but that the soft-billed birds, which 
winter with us, subsist chiefly on insects in their aurelia state. 
All the species of wagtails in severe weather haunt shallow 
streams near their spring-heads, where they never freeze ; and, by 
wading, pick out the aurelias of the genus off Phryganece, &c. 
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. Red- 
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 aurelicB 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, 
* 1 have never found this diminutive species rare in any part of the country which 1 have 
visited ; on the contrary, it has generally proved to be rather common than otherwise, when 
sought for in its proper localities, being mostly very abundant about fir plantations, especially 
spruce, which last-mentioned tree it generally selects for nidification, though I have also found 
the nest in furze. This is always attached to the under'side of a flattened evergreen bough, which 
is the reason why spruce is so preferred, and the young often betray the place of concealment by 
the perpetual sibilant noise they emit when a few days old. The country naturalist will do well 
to look out for an allied species, the fiery-crowned kinglet {regulus ignicapillus) , which is said to 
have been once or twice met with in this country. It is rather larger than the common one, and 
easily distinguishable by its bright flame-coloured crown, and two conspicuous white streaks on 
each side of the head. — Ed. 
t See Derham's Physico-theology, p. 235. 
t The hedge dunnock (accentor modularis) feeds much on various seeds, its bill having suffi- 
cient power of compression to crush a hempseed ; but, as the under mandible is without the lateral 
motion it cannot shell them as the finches do, but crushes and then swallows them whole. Of 
this genus, too, another species has lately been detected in this country, the ground dunnock {A. 
alpinws), which abounds to a considerable altitude on the Alps, and is almost the only small 
feathered inhabitant of those bleak regions. It is considerably larger than the common hedge- 
dunnock, which in its general character it much resembles. Hitherto it has only occurred in 
winter. — Ed. 
