338 COltVIDiE. 



Nutcracker is said to be very active, and, while on the wing, 

 to pluck the cones or nuts from the smaller houghs. It 

 then repairs to a larger branch and there, holding its booty 

 fast to the perch with one foot, skilfully picks out the seeds 

 from the former, or hammers the latter with its beak till the 

 shell is cracked and the kernel exposed.* But it also gets 

 a great deal of its living from the ground, and the Author 

 was told by the late Mr. Dann that, at his residence in the 

 south of Sweden, he had watched family-parties of six or 

 seven Nutcrackers busily picking off and turning over the 

 moss and lichens growing on rocks for the sake of the 

 insects to be found beneath. The ordinary note of the 

 species is described as sounding like crdh, crdh, or era, era, 

 but when alarmed it has a harsh cry which, by many, is 

 compared to that of the Mistletoe-Thrush, and the hen 

 when being fed by her mate utters a soft crooning noise. 

 Many persons have remarked on the resemblance of this 

 bird's habits to those of the Jay. The old notion of its 

 affinity to the Woodpeckers seems to have originated with 

 theorists, and, while not borne out by those who have seen 

 most of it when alive, is absolutely refuted by its purely 

 Corvine structure when examined after death. 



The beak is blackish horn-colour : irides brown : lores 

 and nasal coverts dull white ; top of the head uniform 

 umber-brown ; sides of the head, neck, scapulars, lesser wing- 

 coverts, and all the lower plumage to the vent, dark clove- 

 brown, each feather tipped by a white spot varying in shap< 

 from linear on the head and throat to guttiform on the 

 back and sub-triangular beneath ; greater wing-coverts and 

 remiges blackish-brown, some tipped with white, and most 

 of them glossed with bluish-green and purple on the 

 exposed surface, the sixth and seventh primaries having a 

 white patch on the inner web ; rump uniform dark clove- 



* The Author however noticed that a Nutcracker in the Zoological Gardens 

 was unable to crack nuts. Possibly the bird had only a smooth perch, which, 

 besides being an unsuitable anvil, would not afford it a steady foothold. Mr. 

 Hancock has son:e interesting notes on the habits of one in confinement (Trans. 

 Northumb. and Durb. vi. p. 39). 



