328 Manners of the Isuthatch, 



Art. V. On the Manners of the Nuthatch. By H. S. With a 

 Note by W. Swainson, F.R.S. &c. 



I HAD never seen the little bird called the Nuthatch (»Sitta 

 europas^a) (Jig. 162.), when, one day, as I was expecting the 

 transit of some wood-pigeons under 162 



a beech tree, with a gun in my hand, 

 I observed a little ash-coloured 

 bird squat himself on one of the 

 large lateral trunks over my head, 

 and, after some observation, begin 1 

 to tap loudly, or rather solidly upon^^^^^^^^'^^^^^i^^ 

 the wood, and then proceed round and round the branch, it being 

 clearly the same thing to him whether his nadir or zenith were 

 uppermost. I shot, and the bird fell : there was a lofty hedge 

 between us, and when I had got over he had removed him- 

 self. It was some time before I secured him, and I mention 

 this, because the manner in which he eluded me was charac- 

 teristic of his cunning. He concealed himself in holes at the 

 bottom of a ditch, so long as he heard the noise of motion, 

 and, when all was still, he would scud out and attempt to 

 escape. A wing was broken, and I at length got hold of him. 

 He proved small, but very fierce, and his bite would have 

 made a child cry out. The elbow joint of the wing being 

 thoroughly shattered, and finding that he had no other wound, 

 I cut off the dangling limb, and put him into a large cage 

 with a common lark. The wound did not in the least dimi- 

 nish his activity, nor yet his pugnacity, for he instantly began 

 to investigate all possible means of escape; he tried the bars; 

 then tapped the woodwork of the cage, and produced a knock- 

 ing sound, which made the room reecho; but, finding his 

 efforts vain, he then turned upon the lark, ran under him with 

 his gaping beak to bite, and effectually alarmed his far more 

 gentle and elegant antagonist. Compelled to separate them, 

 the nuthatch, for this bird I discovered him to be by turning 

 over the leaves of an Ornitholbgia, was put into a smaller cage 

 of plain oak wood and wire. Here he remained all night; and, 

 the next morning, his knocking or tapping with his beak was 

 the first sound I heard, though sleeping in an apartment 

 divided from the other by a landing-place. He had food 

 given to him, minced chicken and bread crumbs, and water. 

 He eat and drank with a most perfect impudence, and the 

 moment he had satisfied himself turned again to his work of 

 battering the frame of his cage, the sound from which, both 

 in loudness and prolongation of noise, is only to be compared 

 to the efforts of a fashionable footman upon a fashionable 



