SLENDER-BILLED NUTHATCH 17 



SITTA CAROLINENSIS ACULEATA Cassin 



SLENDER-BILLED NUTHATCH 



Plates 7, 8 



HABITS 



The first of the western races of the white-breasted nuthatches to 

 be described is a well-marked subspecies and is found on the Pacific 

 slope west of the mountains, from southern British Columbia to 

 northern Baia California. Ridgway (1904) gives the following very 

 good description of it: "Similar to S. c. carolinensis, but gray of 

 back, etc., darker (about as in S. c. athM) ; black central areas of 

 greater wing-coverts much less distinct; black areas on inner second- 

 aries also much less distinct, as well as more restricted, that on outer 

 web of second tertial usually with posterior extremity acuminate- 

 pointed instead of rounded; under parts more purely white; bill 

 averaging longer and relatively more slender, and toes shorter; adult 

 female with black of hindneck broken by dark gray tips to the feathers 

 and concealed white spots." ... . nnn 



Its haunts are in the coniferous forests of the mountains from 4 000 

 to 9,400 feet, among the yellow pines on mountain slopes and m 

 the oaks of the higher foothills. Grinnell, Dixon, and Lmsdale (1930) 

 say of its haunts in the Lassen Peak region: "This race of white- 

 breasted nuthatch had its metropolis entirely within the 'blue vegeta- 

 tional area, in the western end of the section ; that is, the birds collected 

 and found upon comparison to belong properly to the subspecies 

 aculeata were all from points west of the western edge of the green 

 coniferous timber. The trees they most frequented were blue ^ oak, 

 valley oak, digger pine, and, along stream courses, cottoj^^^o^^' 



W E Griffee tells me that, "in western Oregon, the slender-billed 

 nuthatches are commonest in the oak-covered foothills, but nowhere are 



they really abundant." .^ . x, 



^s^m/-There is nothing in the nesting habits of this nuthatch 

 that is different from those of the other races of the species. In the 

 Lassen Peak region, Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale (1930) found a 

 nest in "a cavity 5 meters above the gi'ound in a broken lower hmb ot 

 a living blue oak. The tree stood near the bottom of a small ravine. 

 The nest opening was on top of, and at the end of, a limb which ex- 

 tended nearly horizontally from the main trunk for at least 3 meters 

 The site was found by tracing the course of the male as it carried food 

 to the female at the nest." Two other nests were found m oaks; one 

 was "in a natural cavity below a knot hole two meters above the ground 

 on the east side of a large, partly living blue oak" ; the other ; was m a 

 cavity below a crack in a large limb of a valley oak, and it was at 

 least fifteen meters above the ground." 



