528 BRITISH BIRDS. 
eleven pounds, and measuring thirteen inches in height. The entrance to 
the hole usually selected is often too large for the bird’s taste, and it 
plasters up the opening with clay, leaving a small hole for ingress. The 
nest, placed generally at some little distance from the entrance, is crude 
and simple in the extreme. Sometimes a little dead grass or a few dry 
leaves are gathered together into little more than what might be termed a 
substitute for a nest ; at others a few scraps of flaky bark from the fir trees 
are used instead. Should the clay at the entrance to the nest-hole be 
broken down, the birds will soon rebuild it again ; for they show a striking 
affection fur the locality they have chosen. The eggs of the Nuthatch are 
from five to eight in number, and are pure white in ground-colour, 
blotched and spotted with reddish brown, with underlying markings of 
purplish grey. There are several striking varieties in the eggs of this 
bird; but the eggs of a clutch generally resemble each other. For 
instance, all the eggs in one clutch are evenly spotted over the entire 
surface ; the eggs in another clutch have the markings almost exclusively 
confined to a semiconfluent zone round the large end of each egg; whilst 
other clutches are finely and uniformly powdered with minute specks, 
intermingled on the larger end of the eggs with larger and paler spots. 
The markings differ considerably in size ; and on a few specimens fine specks 
of very rich blackish brown are seen, and more rarely one or two very fine 
streaks of the same colour. The type with the semiconfluent zone very 
closely resembles certain varieties of the eggs of the Greenfinch; but the 
pure white ground-colour and reddish instead of purplish tinge of the 
spots serve to distinguish them. They vary from ‘85 to ‘75 inch in length, 
and from °6 to 53 inch in breadth. 
In confinement the Nuthatch makes an engaging and cheerful pet, as 
those persons who have kept them abundantly testify. But the bird must 
be taken young; otherwise its inherent restlessness causes it to make its 
cage-life one long effort to escape, which finally proves its death. So tame, 
however, have these birds become when brought up from the nest, that 
they have been known to creep over their owner’s body in the same 
way that they do on a tree-trunk, as mentioned by Jardine in his edition 
of Wilson’s ‘ American Ornithology.’ 
The southern form of the Nuthatch has the general colour of the upper 
parts, including the two central tail-feathers, the secondaries, and the 
margins to the primaries, clear slate-grey; from the base of the bill a 
black band reaches to each eye and extends behind the eye along the 
side of the neck; all the tail-feathers except the two centre ones are 
black for about three fourths of their length, broadly tipped with slate- 
grey, and with a white patch separating these two colours on both wels 
of the outermost feather and on the inner web of the next two feathers 
on each side. The cheeks and ear-coverts, the upper throat, and the 
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