WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH 7 



p. 424, seems to corroborate this statement. However, I once had 

 under observation for weeks a nuthatch that had lost his entire left 

 foot, the tarsus ending in a stump, thickened at the end, and in spite 

 of his deformity, he was able to clamber over the branches, both large 

 and small ones, and even to hang head downward, clinging to a small 

 branch with his single foot. 



Sometimes a nuthatch will hop down to the very base of a tree and 

 then continue on over the gi-ound. Here the bird looks strange 

 enough, accustomed as we are to see it in reversed position, as leaning 

 forward it jumps or leaps along, reminding us not a little of a frog. 

 Edward H. Forbush (1929) tells of "a pair that spent an entire fore- 

 noon going over the chips left under a large tree from which the loose 

 bark had been scraped. The birds picked over this material very 

 thoroughly in their search for insects and insects' eggs." 



The tameness of the white-breasted nuthatch, or the lack of suspi- 

 cion it shows toward human beings, is remarkable. With a little pa- 

 tience a bird may be induced to feed from our hand, especially if we 

 are indoors and reach out through an open window to the food shelf 

 where it is accustomed to feed. There are many such records in the 

 literature. A striking example of trustfulness is related thus by 

 E. M. Mead (1903), who while outdoors in Central Park, New York, 

 fed a bird for two successive seasons: "So fearless is she that she 

 will take food from my lips, shoulder or lap. Even an open umbrella 

 over my head has no terrors for her. Although she manifested some 

 annoyance at the appearance of the camera within 2 feet of us for 

 more than an hour, during which time 12 exposures were made, still 

 she repeated all her little tricks, not only once, but several times." 



The bird displays remarkable agility in the air, on the bark of trees 

 and small branches ; it can catch a falling nut in midair, or scramble 

 downward over the bark and overtake it, and it can hang upside down, 

 swinging from a tiny branch. A. C. Bent (MS.) mentions a bird that 

 ran down a swaying rope, "always head downward, and scolded me 

 within 2 feet of my face." 



Charles L. Whittle (1930) reports a banded bird known to have 

 reached the age of 7i/2 years. 



Wilbur K. Butts (1927), after making a careful investigation of 

 the feeding range of marked white-breasted nuthatches, remarks: 

 "In the course of the study it soon became apparent that each pair 

 did not wander freely about, but had a definite, restricted, though 

 fairly large feeding range." This accords with the experience I had 

 with a male bird v/hich visited my feeding shelf daily, with one short 

 interlude, for over a year. Butts (1931) gives the following inter- 

 esting summary of a subsequent study of the bird : 



1. All or nearly all the individuals of the Nuthatch found at Ithaca were 

 permanent residents. There is no evidence of any migration in this locality. 



