The Natural History of Selborne

Great Tit, Parus major; photo byMarek Szczepanek

• 1792: February 26, 1792 – Rain in the night.  Humble bee.  Worms come out on grass plots: a great snail.
• 1791: February 26, 1791 – Deep snow, which damaged & broke my plum-trees, & hedges. This is much the greatest snow that we have seen this year. Some of the deep lanes are hardly passable.
• 1789: February 26, 1789 – Our butcher begins to kill grass-lamb.
• 1783: February 26, 1783 – Venus begins to appear behind the hanger.
• 1780: February 26, 1780 – The ground is covered with snow.  People that were abroad early say the cold was very intense.  The ground is hard as iron.
• 1779: February 26, 1779 – Pilewort.  Summer-like.
• 1775: February 26, 1775 – Viola odorata.  Ivy-berries begin to turn black.
• 1774: February 26, 1774 – Land-springs rise.  The titmouse, which at this time begins to make two quaint, sharp notes, which some people compare to the whetting of a saw, is the marsh-titmouse.  It is the great titmouse which sings those three chearful notes which the country people say sounds like “sit ye down”: they call the bird by that name.
• 1773: February 26, 1773 – Stormy night, with vast rains, fierce wind all day.  This storm did considerable damage in many places.
• 1769: February 26, 1769 – Vast rain in the night.  Vast aurora borealis.

Walter Johnson’s edition of the journals footnotes the entry on the songs of the marsh- and great-tits with a caution that White has reversed the birds, the great tit being the ‘saw-sharpener’. For comparison their songs are at the top of their respective pages at the RSPB:
Marsh Tit page
Great Tit page

Given the modest snowfall that paralyzed the nation a few weeks ago, one wonders what British Rail would have made of the winters of the Little Ice Age. Snow is now extremely unusual the southern part of the country; let us hope we will continue to see it occasionally in the coming years.