INYO NUTHATCH 19 



in the trunk. "At no time during all the lodgment of these 29 birds, 

 did 2 arrive at the same time, nor was there a variation in the time of 

 the appearance of any 2 birds of more than 30 seconds." He does not 

 state the exact time, which was probably only a few minutes before 

 sunset, for these and other birds have a remarkable sense of time, which 

 is almost uncanny. 



This wonderful faculty is well illustrated by an observation, or 

 series of observations, made by Dr. S. F. Blake (1928), on the regu- 

 larity with which a slender-billed nuthatch went to roost under the 

 tiles of the roof of a band stand at Palo Alto. "His hour of retiring, 

 usually just before the sun disappeared, corresponded in a general 

 way with the decrease in the length of day." On nine occasions, from 

 June 29 to August 26, the time varied from 10 minutes to 25 minutes 

 before sunset, and on only four occasions was it more than 20 minutes. 

 "On two occasions, two nuthatches were seen together near the band- 

 stand, but only one was ever seen to enter a tile." 



Voice. — The voices of the western races of the white-breasted nut- 

 hatch seem to differ somewhat from the well-known calls of our eastern 

 bird. Ralph Hoffmann (1927) calls the note of this one "a sharp nasal 

 keer, keer,''^ and says further : "When two birds are working together, 

 they utter a low quit quit. A high quer is the alarm note about the 

 nest. In early spring and summer the male repeats a mellow too too 

 too, like the blowing of a little trumpet ; this song is generally given 

 from a twig, an unusual perch at any other time." Grinnell and Storer 

 (1924) describe this spring song as "a mere monotonous repetition of 

 a certain two syllabled word : cher-wer, cher-wer, cher'-wer, etc." 



Dawson (1923) says that it has a variety of notes "all distinguished 

 by a peculiar nasal quality." One he mentions, quonk, quonk, quonk, 

 or ho-onk, ho-onk, might remind us of the call of the eastern bird; 

 but he says that "all the notes of the Slender-billed Nuthatch have 

 a softened and subdued character as compared with those of the 

 eastern bird." 



SITTA CAROLINENSIS TENUISSIMA Grinnell 



INYO NUTHATCH 



HABITS 



If the slender-billed nuthatch has a slender bill, this more recently 

 described form from the Panamint and White Mountains of California 

 has a much slenderer bill ; hence the appropriate name tenuissima. 



Although originally described from a series of 21 specimens, col- 

 lected in the above-mentioned mountains, in Inyo County, Dr. Grin- 

 nell (1918) suggested that it "is likely to be found to extend north 

 along the western rim of the Great Basin at least to Fort Klamath, 

 Oreg." This prophecy has been partially fulfilled by A. J. van Rossem 



