or a chickadee, as upon one who entered an enclosure and cut down an orchard 

 or a shade tree. 



The nuthatch has a variety of notes, all distinguished by a peculiar nasal 

 quality. When hunting with the troop, he gives an occasional softly resonant 

 tut or tuttut, as if to remind his fellows that all's well. The halloo note is more 

 decided, tin, pronounced a la Francais. By means of this note and by using it 

 in combination, they seem to be able to carry on quite an animated conversation, 

 calling across from tree to tree. During the mating season and often at other 

 times they have an even more decided and distinctive note, quonk, quonk, quonk, 

 or ho-onk, ho-onk, in moderate pitch and with deliberation. Their song, if such 

 they may be said to have, consists of a rapid succession of simple syllables, tew, 

 tew, tew% tew, tew, which are musical, vibrant and far-sounding, a sort of 

 trumpeting, out of all proportion to the size of the bird. 



The nest of the nuthatch is placed in a cavity carefully chiselled out and 

 usually at a great height in an elm tree or perhaps an oak. Both sexes share the 

 labor of excavation, and when the cavity is somewhat deepened one bird removes 

 the chips while the other delves. Like all the hole-nesting species of this family, 

 but unHke the woodpeckers, the nuthatches provide for their home an abundant 

 lining of moss, fur, feathers and the like. This precaution is justified from the 

 fact that they are early nesters — complete sets of eggs being found no later 

 than the second week in April. 



The male is a devoted husband and father, feeding the female incessantly 

 during incubation and with her sharing in the care of the large family long after 

 many birds have forgotten their young. The young birds early learn to creep 

 up to the mouth of the nesting hole to receive food when their turn comes ; 

 and they are said to crawl about the parental tree for some days before they 

 attempt flight. 



English Wild Birds for British Columbia 



Some 450 wild birds have just been despatched from Euston, England, for 

 British Columbia. They consist of sky larks, robins, goldies, tits, and linnets, 

 and they will, in the phrase on the notice attached to the special vans in which 

 they were conveyed to Liverpool, "be set free to furnish their adopted country 

 with British stock and melody." For several weeks past the birds have been 

 kept in aviaries at Leadenhall market and Bermondsey, and it took two men 

 seven hours to catch them and put them in cages on the night before their transit. 

 The Dominion Express Company, who have arranged the journey, have provided 

 for special accommodation on the steamer and also in the train across Canada, 

 and as soon as the birds have reached the end of their long journey they will be 

 released. It is intended to send out over 1,000 next spring, so that the English 

 farmer who has emigrated west will see the English robin perching on his fence 

 and hear the larks singing overhead as in the fields at home. 



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