The Natural History of Selborne

• 1792: February 23, 1792 – Began to drink tea by day light.
• 1791: February 23, 1791 – The farmers are very much behind in their plowings for a spring crop thro’ the wetness of the season.
• 1787: February 23, 1787 – On Feb. 23 the cuckow was heard at Rolle in Switzerland.  Rooks build at Faringdon parsonage.
• 1785: February 23, 1785 – Snow-scenes very beautiful.   Venus makes a most beautiful appearance.
• 1784: February 23, 1784 – The tops of the blades of wheat are scorched with the frost.
• 1780: February 23, 1780 – Ivy-berries, now near ripe, are coddled with the frost.  Heath fires.
• 1779: February 23, 1779 – Drivers use the summer track.  Roads dusty.
• 1775: February 23, 1775 – Flocks of hen chaffinches, with some bramblings among them.  Saw several empty nutshells with a hole in one side, fix’d in the chinks on the head of a gate-post, as it were in a vice, & pierced as I suppose, by a nuthatch, sitta europaea.  Vid: Wllughby’s Ornithol::
• 1774: February 23, 1774 – Several muscae appear  Skylarks would sing if the wind would permit.
• 1770: February 23, 1770 – Blue mist. Vulg. called London smoke. Quae: Does this meteorous appearance shew itself on the N:E. side of London when the wind is N:E? If that is the case then that mist cannot proceed from the smoke of the metropolis. This mist has a strong smell, & is supposed to occasion blights. When such mists appear they are usually followed by dry weather. They have somewhat the smell of coal-smoke & therefore are supposed to come from London as they always come to us with a N:E:wind.
• 1768: February 23, 1768 – Great rain.  Prodigious floods in Yorkshire, which have swept away all the bridges.

Notes:

Francis Willughby's Ornithology in 1678 was the first work in Europe to attempt to categorize birds by their physical features. His estate Willughby Hall has been keeping an excellent record of birds spotted there in modern times, with some links to their 17th century engravings.

"Coddled" means softened.