182 GRAY LADY AND THE BIRDS 
“There, he’s going away and walking down the roof 
head first; I don’t see why he doesn’t slip and fall, the 
same as I did once when I tried to walk down the back 
stairs on my hands and knees head first, ’cause brother 
dared me.” 
Gray Lady hurried to the window in time to see the 
Nuthatch give a final pound to the object that was 
wedged between the shingles. With her opera-glasses, 
she discovered that it was the empty shell of a beechnut. 
“This little bird has been kind enough to write the 
meaning of its singular name here on the roof, evidently 
for the benefit of the Kind Hearts’ Club, for I have been 
expecting that some of you would ask from what the 
term ‘Nuthatch’ came.” 
“T thought it was a funny name, but then lots of 
birds’ names seem queer, until you hear about them,” 
said Eliza Clausen. 
“This bird is very fond of nuts,’ continued Gray 
Lady, “not the very hard ones like butternuts, but the 
smaller acorns, chestnuts, and especially the little three- 
cornered beechnuts, with the sweet meat. Having no 
teeth to crack them like a squirrel, and not being able 
to use his beak for a nutcracker, he wedges the nut fast 
and then uses his sharp, strong bill for a hatchet and 
hatches the nut open; by this he has earned his name, 
‘Nuthatch.’ 
“There is another name that Goldilocks once gave 
him that is quite as good, and that would remind you of 
him wherever you hear it, — the ‘Upside-down’ bird !— 
for what other bird that you know can climb about as 
he does?” 
