RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH 25 



a nest containing almost fully grown young that was but 2 feet from 

 the ground in an old rotten stub and during the 15 minutes that I 

 watched the birds they made seven trips to the nest, carrying each 

 time not food but pitch which they carefully smeared on any wood 

 that was exposed within several inches of the entrance." 



William Brewster (1938), writing of a nest found near Lake 

 Umbagog, Maine, says: "This nest was finished today but contained 

 no eggs and had but little pitch. Both birds, however, were there, 

 and both were hringing 'pitch and plastered it on the bark below the 

 hole. I watched them a long time. They brought it on the tips of 

 their bills in little globules, alighted against the lower edge of the hole, 

 and then tapped it on in various places as low as they could reach, 

 but without shifting their foothold." Of another nest in the same 

 region he says : "Nest in red maple stub over water ; tree very rotten ; 

 height about twenty feet ; hole on west side about two feet from top. A 

 quantity of pitch, which my guide pronounced unmistakably spruce^ 

 about the entrance and inside its tunnel. Stub standing in five feet of 

 water twenty yards from the shore." 



W. Leon Dawson (1923) writes : "Canadian Nuthatches nest at a,ny 

 height, and their lack of consideration in this respect accounts for 

 much of our relative ignorance. I located a nest, in Seattle, in a 

 nearly limbless live fir tree, at a height of 120 feet. Obligations to a 

 growing family forbade attention to details. On the other hand, a 

 nest taken near Tacoma on the 8th of June, 1906, was found at a 

 height of only 7 feet, in a small fir stump. * * * The wood of the 

 last-named nesting stub was very rotten, and the eggs rested only 

 4 inches below the entrance. The nest-lining, in this instance, was a 

 heavy mat an inch in thickness, and was composed of vegetable 

 matter — wood fiber, soft grasses, etc., — without hair of any sort." 



Eggs. — [Author's note: The red-breasted nuthatch lays ordinarily 

 4 to 7 eggs ; probably 5 or 6 eggs make up the usual set. The eggs vary 

 from ovate to rounded-ovate, and have very little or no gloss. The 

 ground color is pure white, or more rarely pinkish white or creamy 

 white. They are sometimes heavily and sometimes sparingly spotted, 

 or finely dotted, with bright reddish brown, such as "ferruginous," 

 "hazel," "cinnamon-rufous," or "vinaceous," and some darker shades 

 of brown. As a rule they are very pretty eggs. The measurements 

 of 50 eggs in the United States National Museum average 15.2 by 

 11.9 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 17.0 by 

 12.5, 15.2 by 12.7, 14.2 by 11.2, and 15.2 by 11.1 millimeters.] 



Towng. — As with most young birds that spend their nest life hidden 

 away in cavities, we know little of the development of nestling nut- 

 hatches. After their emergence, however, we note a rapid increase 

 in strength and activity. Some years ago I watched four young birds 

 that had left the nest 5 days before. They were in a white pine a 



