242 OMNIVOROUS BIRDS. 



winter they abound in all the forests of the Southern 

 States to Florida, and probably extend their visits into 

 Mexico. In all these countries, in autumn, families of 

 ihem are seen chattering and roving through the woods, 

 busily engaged in gleaning their multifarious food, along 

 with the preceding species. Nuthatches, and Creepers, 

 the whole forming a busy, active, and noisy group, whose 

 manners, food, and habits bring them together in a com- 

 mon pursuit. Their diet varies with the season, for be- 

 sides insects, their larvae, and eggs, of which they are 

 more particularly fond, in the month of September they 

 leave the woods and assemble familiarly in our orchards 

 and gardens, and even enter the thronging cities in quest 

 of that support which their native forests now deny them. 

 I^arge seeds of many kinds, particularly those which are 

 oily, as the Sun-flower, and Pine and Spruce Kernels 

 are now sought after. These seeds, in the usual manner 

 of the genus, are seized in the claws and held against the 

 branch, until picked open by the bill to obtain their con- 

 tents. Fat of various kinds is also greedily eaten, and 

 they regularly watch the retreat of the hog-killers, in the 

 country, to glean up the fragments of meat which adhere 

 to the places where the carcases have been suspended. At 

 times they feed upon the wax of the Candle-berry Myrtle 

 [Myrica cerifera) ; they likewise pick up crumbs near 

 the houses, and search the weather-boards, and even the 

 window-sills, familiarly for their lurking prey, and are 

 particularly fond of spiders and the eggs of destructive 

 moths, especially those of the canker-worm, which they 

 oreedily destroy in all its stages of existence. It is said 

 that they sometimes attack their own species when the in- 

 dividual is sickly, and aim their blows at the skull with a 

 view to eat the brain ; but this barbarity I have never wit- 

 nessed. In winter, when satisfied, they will descend to 



