CERTHIADS, 263 
neither the reversed claw nor the stiff tail-feathers 
of most of these birds. 
The food of the Nuthatch consists partly of 
insects and partly of nuts, acorns and beech-masts: 
these it generally places in a chink in the bark of a 
tree or a slit in a gate-post or railing, and hammers 
at them with its strong beak until it succeeds in 
splitting them, or in making a hole sufficiently large 
to enable it to extract the kernel. In the insect way 
it eats caterpillars, spiders and beetles. It may, it 
is said, be tempted to pay frequent visits to any tree, 
even close by a house, by nuts being placed for it in 
the chinks of the bark, or even to a window if nuts 
and bread are placed for it on the window-sill; it 
then becomes so tame that it will take these things 
from the hand. 
Like the Woodpeckers the Nuthatch places its 
nest in a hole in a tree, but it makes rather more 
nest than these birds. 
The beak, which is thick and strong, is of a bluish 
black horn-colour, except the base of the under 
mandible, which is light brownish white; the irides 
are hazel; the head, neck, back, scapulars, wing- 
coverts, rump and tail-coverts are light bluish grey ; 
there is a black streak from the base of the upper 
mandible through the eye and a short way down the 
sides of the neck; the quills are dusky, the second- 
aries and tertials rather broadly margined with the 
same colour as the back; the two centre feathers of 
