92 



THE OOLOGiST. 



and continued to do so until caught by 

 a cat. 



The ones I have at the present time, 

 a pair, have been in captivity about 

 two years and are in excellent condi- 

 tion with good appetites and plumage 

 at its brightest and best. 



Ellis F. Hadley, 

 Dayton, Oregon. 



Notes on Nidification of the WMfcebreasbad 

 Nuthatch- 



On April 5th of this year it was my 

 good fortune to discover a pair of 

 White-breasted Nuthatches, Silta car- 

 olinensis,hx'TB..,\a. the very mi. 1st of the 

 activities of nest building. It was in 

 sugar makmg time and I was engaged 

 in those duties of sweetness for which 

 those little shanties scattei'ed about in 

 maple woods like so many Thuran 

 huts are set apart as sacred. The 

 knot-hole was up a ruin beech some 

 30 feet, Avhich tree stood about 60 feet 

 from the house. 



From time to time I left my work to 

 keep a chair down around back and 

 watch the birds through a telescope 

 which I had fixed on a tripod. The 

 female was collecting bark from a 

 sugar-tree not twenty feet from the 

 pi'ospective nest tree, when I first no- 

 ticed her. She pecked off bits of bark 

 working very assiduously. For some 

 time she loosened and disposed of one 

 piece a minute, with but very little 

 variation. The pieces were half an 

 inch square, fre(iuently much larger, 

 just as they happened to come off. 



In the morning, it was 10:30 or there- 

 abouts when I first observed her, she 

 was laboring alone; but in the after- 

 noon the male helped and work went 

 on overy rapidly. They sometimes 

 bi-ought bits-of moss or lichen. I could 

 not tell which, stopping to strike it 

 from side to side against the bark, 

 either to dust it or fray and soften it. 

 The female did most of the work how- 



ever, the male only working by spasms 

 and haphazard. 



I could quite readily tell Mrs. 

 Nuthatch by her superior activity; she 

 also had a blue feather on her 

 shoulder broken so that it was ruffled 

 up— evidently a tai'e caused by her 

 house-wifely efforts. She was the 

 busiest little bird you ever saw. For 

 a time Mr. Nuthatch collected the bark 

 while his wife bustled back and forth 

 from him to the hole and from the hole 

 to him again. He kept her incessantly 

 at it. I could hear him "acking" away 

 and hammering at a distance, coming 

 out after having disposed of a frag- 

 ment Mrs. would wait till he called her 

 looking quickly and gracefully heri^ 

 and there like a perfect little bird co- 

 quette, and then dart off. 



By and by he seemed to get ahead of 

 her, for they both brought bark and 

 lichen — though little of the latter. 

 Though what the}' wanted with so 

 much bark I do not know. This was 

 the first time I ever had the opportun- 

 ity to study the nidification of this bird. 

 Whether it is a common practice or 

 not I do not remember reading of it. 



When he came with his load he was in 

 and out again in a twinkle, evidently 

 throwing it down for her to dispose of 

 when she arrived: and T suspicioned he 

 was not very choice-iu'his selection of 

 material — poor fellow he had never 

 studied the practical and artistically 

 mechanical side of matrimony — the 

 fabrication of the all-important cradle. 

 Once I noticed he had a large piece of 

 curled bark taken from some dead 

 limb. Mrs. Nuthatch happened to be 

 inside when he went in with it, and she 

 sent him out with it in a huny. "Do 

 you think I w%ant such a rough thing 

 as that? A piece of bark that will stick 

 up in spite of all I can do — an incon- 

 venience to myself and a painful thing 

 to the young ones. Take it right out 

 again." 



It was interesting to notice that these 



