• SITTA EUROPiEA. 501 



Genus— SITTA. (Linn.) 

 Nuthatch. 



Sitta Europcea. {Linn.) 



" Take warning ! he that will not sing 

 While yon sun prospers in the blue, 

 Shall sing for want ere leaves are new." — Tennyson. 



There is also only one European, hence only one British 

 species of this genus. It is indigenous, and chiefly found south 

 of the Tweed, but has not, to my knowledge, been seen in Fife. 

 It is a beautiful, lively, little bird the size of the lesser wood 

 pecker, which it resembles in its white cheeks and black streak 

 behind the eye. Besides insects it feeds on the kernels of nuts 

 and seeds, and gets its name from the singular way it breaks 

 the nut, which it fixes in a crevice of a tree or a post, and 

 hammers away with its strong bill until it breaks the shell, 

 pivoting itself on its short legs, and jerking its body forward 

 like a man breaking a stone. When it finds a suitable crevice 

 it returns to it as thrushes do with snails to a favourite stone to 

 break the shells. The nut often falls, but before it reaches the 

 ground the nuthatch catches and replaces it in the crevice. 

 It places itself above the nut, and with great force and rapidity 

 strikes the edge with its wedge-shaped bill till it splits it open ; 

 sometimes a peck of shells may be found under the spot. 

 White of Selborne says : — " My countrymen talk of a bird that 

 makes a clatter with its bill against a bough or some old pales, 

 calling it a jarbird. I got one shot in the act— it was the Sitta 

 Europcea. The noise may be heard a furlong or more." The 

 tapping of the green woodpecker is heard farther. It is seldom 

 seen in the open fields unless in search of haws. It breeds in 

 April, and, according to Montagu, selects the old nesting hole of 

 a woodpecker. " This hole," he says, " is first contracted by a 

 plaster of clay, leaving only an opening sufficient for itself to 

 pass in and out. The nest is made of dead leaves, mostly 

 oak, heaped together without order, eggs six or seven, white, 

 spotted with rust-colour, so like those of the greater tit as to 

 defy difference. If the clay is destroyed it is speedily replaced to 

 keep out larger birds. So secure does it feel in its citadel that, 



