4 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Then, as if not quite satisfied, this unique pair discovered a dead rabbit — one 

 that had been dead for soiue time — and proceeded to line the nest proper, as well 

 as the rest of the box, with rabbit fur, so that when completed the box smelled 

 more like a buzzard's domicile then a nuthatch's home. Brer' Rabbit's fluffy tail 

 held a conspicuous place in the middle of the box. 



The habit of taking hair from dead animals may be the birds' usual 

 procedure, for Edward H. Forbush (1929) says: "Mr. Maurice Broun 

 tells me that he saw one come down from a tree and hop along the 

 ground until it reached a dead squirrel from which it plucked a bunch 

 of hair nearly as large as its own head." 



Helen Granger Wliittle (1926) gives a record of a pair mated for 

 2 years. She says: "In the Bulletin for October, 1925, I reported a 

 pair of Nuthatches {Sitta c. carolinensis) which had remained to- 

 gether a winter and a summer, and which had brought a family of 

 young to our Peterboro [New Hampshire] station in July 1925. These 

 parents have been under observation for another year. They have 

 now spent at least two winters and two summers constantly in each 

 other's compan}^ and they have raised two families which we know 

 about. Keeping 'tabs' on these birds has been simplified by the fact 

 that both are banded on the left tarsus. All our other Nuthatches have 

 been banded on the right tarsus." 



Eggs, — [Author's note: All the nuthatches lay large sets of eggs, 

 and the white-breasted nuthatch is perhaps the most consistently pro- 

 lific ; it lays 5 to 9 or even 10 eggs to a set, but the extremes are un- 

 common ; 8 seems to be the commonest number. In a series of 15 sets 

 in the J. P. Norris collection there are 2 sets of 5, 1 of 6, 3 of 7, 7 of 8, 

 and only 1 of 9. 



The eggs are usually ovate or short-ovate and have very little gloss. 

 The ground color is usually pure white but often creamy white and 

 sometimes pinkish white. They are prettily and usually heavily 

 marked with bright reddish brown, "ferruginous," "cinnamon-rufous," 

 "hazel," or "vinaceous" and sometimes with a few spots of pale laven- 

 der or purplish drab. The markings are often thickest at the larger 

 end ; some eggs are evenly sprinkled over the whole surface with fine 

 dots of pale brown. 



The measurements of 40 eggs in the United States National Museum 

 average 18.8 by 14.3 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes 

 measure 19.8 by 15.0, 17.3 by 13.0, and 18.3 by 15.2 millimeters.] 



Young.— The, young birds when they leave the nest look very much 

 like their parents. In Mr. Bent's nest there were "two females and 

 three males, showing the same sex characters as the adults. They were 

 nearly grown and fully fledged; they could not fly much, but could 

 climb perfectly." 



Dr. Arthur A. Allen (1929) states that the incubation period is 

 12 days and that both parents incubate the eggs and feed the young 



