124 BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



and rush out, like human beings after an earthquake shock, 

 into the open air, where the nuthatch soon disposes of them ; 

 and, unless I am mistaken, it is the only British bird that 

 arrives at its food by a deliberate guile. All others, I 

 think, catch their food by chancing to find it abroad, but 

 the nuthatch accomplishes the effect by a reasonable cause, 

 and frightens out of their chinks the creatures that it wishes 

 to capture. Sometimes the insects only scuttle from one 

 refuge into another, but the nuthatch rips the bark off in flakes 

 and pursues the poor wretches from covert to covert. 



It takes its name from another peculiarity, its fondness for 

 nuts, beech-mast and acorns, which it fixes tight into some 

 little crevice in the bark and hammers open. Looking at the 

 shells of hazel-nuts that it has cracked, I believe that it first 

 pecks a hole, and then getting its beak into it crosswise to 

 the natural cleavage of the shell, splits the nut with a sharp 

 rap on the bark. Its beak enters like a wedge and, while the 

 two half-shells drop to the ground, one on either side, pierces 

 and holds the kernel. It must take it out of its vice to 

 split it, for while tightly gripped the bird could only pierce a 

 hole in the nut and not cleave it, and this is evident if we 

 put the two halves together, for we then see that though a 

 hole was made, the shell did not split. The bird had to take it 

 out of the cleft on its beak and knock it on the tree. 



When nesting, it is not content with a hole that just 

 suits it in size, but must needs choose a laro-e hole and then 



o 



