The Natural History of Selborne

There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse, and the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Europaea), which live much on hazel nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that one would wonder how the kernel can be extracted through it; while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill: but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were in a vice, in some cleft of a tree, or in some crevice; when, standing over it, he perforates the stubborn shell. We have often placed nuts in the chink of a gate-post where nut-hatches have been known to haunt, and have always found that those birds have readily penetrated them. While at work they make a rapping noise that may be heard at a considerable distance.

Bro: Ben cuts three rows of Lucern daily for his three horses: by the time that he has gone thro’ the plot the first rows are fit to be cut again.

A pair of red-backed Butcher-birds, lanius collurio, have got a nest in Bro: Tho: outlet.  They have built in a quickset-hedge.  We took one of the eggs out of the nest: it was white; but surrounded at the big end by a circle of brown spots, coronae instar.

Medlars blow.  Mushrooms in a bed under a shed in Brother Thomas’s garden.

Mr Charles Etty returns from Canton.  He left England in March 1785, & sailed first for Bombay.  White-thorn bloom fragrant.

The red-start sits, & sings on the vane in Bro: Ben’s garden upon the top of an high elm.

Leaf-cabbages very fine.  Spinage good.

Agues abound around S. Lambeth.  Cucumbers not plenty.

Ice at Nore-hill.  Tulips make a show.

House martin appears: only one.