The Natural History of Selborne

Grey sun, sweet day.  Bees, & flies moving: air full of insects: spiders shoot their webs: butter-fly out.

Thaw.  Tipulae are playing about as if there had been no frost today.

Bottles of water frozen in chambers.  Haws frozen on the hedges & spoiled so as to be no longer of any service to the birds.

Dark & thawing, frost, snow on the ground.  Larks congregate roads hard, & beaten.

Steady frost, snow on the ground.

A grosbeak was shot near the village.  They sometimes come to us in the winter.

Strong N. auroras tho’ the moon was very bright.

The shortest day: a truly black, & dismal one.

Missel thrush sings merrily every morning.  Song thrush very loud.  A new magpie’s nest, near finished was found in a coppice: this soft season reminds birds of nidification.

Baromr 30.  Still, dark, & spitting, deep fog.  When the baromr gets very high, it is often attended with black spitting weather.