THE PYGMY NUTHATCH. 293 
tree, but only to come back as often to the same fascinating belt. Finally, 
from a new vantage point | made out the hole, a very fresh one in an open 
stretch of bark about one hundred and twenty feet up. As I looked, one 
bird entered the excavation and remained, while the other mounted guard at 
the entrance. After about five minutes of this the tiny miner emerged and 
the other, the male, I think, took her place. His duty appeared to be to 
remove the chips, for he stuck his head out at the entrance momentarily, and 
one imagined, rather than saw at that height, the tiny flashes of falling white. 
All very romantic, but not a good “risk” from the insurance man’s standpoint. 
These Nuthatches must delight in work. They will spend a week in 
laborious excavation, and then abandon the claim for no apparent reason. 
Perhaps it is an outcropping of that same instinct of restlessness which makes 
Wrens build “decoy” nests. One such finished nest we found to be shaped 
not unlike a nursing bottle, a bottle with a bent neck. The entrance was one and 
three-eighths inches across, the cavity three inches wide, one and a half deep, and 
eight long (keeping in mind the analogy of the bottle resting on its flat side). 
The birds do not always nest at ungetatable heights. A nest taken near 
Tacoma on the 8th of June, 1906, was found at a height of only seven feet in 
a small fir stump. The wood was very rotten, and the eggs rested only four 
inches below the entrance. The nest-lining in this instance was a heavy mat 
an inch in thickness, and was composed of vegetable matter—wood fiber, soft 
grasses, etc.—without hair of any sort, as would surely have been the case 
with that of a Chestnut-backed Chickadee, for which it was at first taken. 
The Nuthatches appear to leave their eggs during the warmer hours of 
the day, and one must await the return of the truant owners if he would be 
sure of identification. One mark, but not infallible, is the presence of pitch, 
smeared all around and especially below the nesting hole. The use of this is 
not quite certain, but Mr. Bowles’s hazard is a good one; viz., that it serves 
to ward off the ants, which are often a pest to hole-nesting birds. These ants 
not only annoy the sitting bird, who is presumably able to defend herself, but 
they sometimes destroy unguarded eggs, or young birds. 
No. 113. 
PYGMY, NUTHATCH. 
A. O. U. No. 730. Sitta pygmza Vigors. 
Synonym.—Catirornia Nutsatcn (early name). 
Description.—A dults: Crown, nape, and sides of head to below eye grayish 
olive or olive-brown, a buffy white spot on hind-neck (nearly concealed in fresh 
plumage) ; lores and region behind eye (bounding the olive) blackish; remaining 
upperparts plumbeous, browning (brownish slate) on flight feathers, etc., becom- 
