152 SLENDER-BILL NUTHATCH. 
It is difficult to watch its movements, so 
diminutive is it in size, and yet so quick withal. 
The mellow song of the wrens seems almost 
like fairy music; and sounds so delicately sweet 
appear to be out of place amidst such giant 
trees. 
The nest is in shape like that of our house- 
hold pets, built against a dead stump, or in the 
deep clefts in the bark of a pine-tree which are 
often taken advantage of, to act as lateral walls. 
Its skill in imitating the colour and appearance of 
the bark is perfectly wonderful: even when one 
has watched the bird go in, it is most difficult to 
make out that it is a nest and not real bark; 
take the eye off the spot but an instant, and 
goodbye to finding the nest again, except the 
birds go in and out. They build in June, six 
or seven eges being generally laid, and arrive 
about the middle of May, leaving in September, 
young and old together. 
Nuthatches were busy in nearly every pine- 
tree, with their constant companions the restless 
tits. The three species common in the forests 
east of the Cascades are :— 
Tur Stenper-pitL Nutrsatcn (Sitta aculeata, 
Cassin).—This nuthatch is very abundant in 
the pine-forests from the coast to the Rocky 
