28 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the male came to it with a bill full of insects— large, gauzy-winged 

 Diptera they looked like." 



O. A. Stevens, of Fargo, N. Dak. (MS.), writes to Mr. Bent of his 

 experiments in feeding a female nuthatch. He says: "To facilitate 

 observations, I feed finely chopped nuts in a block on top of the window 

 shelf. Three holes in the block allow comparisons of different foods. 

 Black walnuts are by all means preferred, but peanuts are quite accept- 

 able and constitute the usual fare. English walnuts and pecans rank 

 high, the harder almonds and hazelnuts below peanuts. Curiously, 

 the soft, oily Brazil nut, which would seem suitable, rates low. It is 

 interesting that the birds adopt so readily foods that they could not 

 have known before. 



"In feeding, nuthatches are untidy, spearing into the supply and 

 scattering the crumbs about. A striking feature of their feeding is 

 that they never use their feet as chickadees do continually, but always 

 wedge a large piece into some crack while they pick it to pieces. In 

 one full day's observation when sunflower seed, walnuts, and peanuts 

 were available, I did not see this nuthatch take any sunflower seeds 

 although the chickadees were taking them freely." 



Francis H. Allen (MS.) says: "On August 22, 1929, a warm, still 

 day when flying insects were probably plentiful, I found many red- 

 breasted nuthatches perched on the tops of spruce trees on Grand 

 Manan and flying out and catching insects after the manner of fly- 

 catchers." He saw one in "West Roxbury, Mass., catching flies in 

 October, once from an apple tree and then from the top of a larch. 

 He also saw one flying frequently to the ground under a hemlock and 

 back into the tree or a shrub, "where he evidently ate or disposed of 

 what he had picked up. He was probably getting hemlock seeds, the 

 tree being full of cones. He seemed to be making a business of getting 

 his food in this way." 



Behavior. — Besides scrambling over the trunks and branches of 

 trees in the true nuthatch fashion, this little bird, as we have seen, 

 makes excursions out into the air to capture flying insects, and not 

 infrequently visits the ground where it hops about or bathes in a little 

 pool of rain-water or melted snow. Theed Pearce, in a note to Mr. 

 Bent, mentions "a habit, when perched on a small branch, of flirting 

 or wagging its tail and back part of its body from side to side. This 

 was seen on March 23, and so suggests a form of display." 



Dr. Charles W. Townsend (1913) describes thus the behavior of 

 five birds which alighted on a steamship: 



Five of this species, one adult, the others ininiatnre, came on board the steamer 

 in a fog and remained on board two days. They were extremely tame and crept 

 about the deck, and on the ropes and spars, sometimes within a few inches of 

 the passengers. One alighted on the coat-collar of a sailor as he was lighting 

 his pipe, and another on my shoulder as I stood on the bridge. I put my hand 



