DUSKY, GRAY, AND SLATE-COLORED 343 
heavy timber, the Slender-billed Nuthatch makes his 
home through the long summer days. When the winter 
storms threaten and food becomes scarce, he sometimes 
works his way leisurely down to a lower altitude where 
insect life is more easily found, but usually he remains 
all the year in the same locality. So protective is the 
coloring of these slate-colored birds that, but for their 
nasal “yang, zang, henk-ah, henk-ah” (described by 
Mrs. Bailey), they might pass unnoticed by the casual 
observer. They travel head downward round and round 
the trunks of the oaks, hunting in every crevice for larvee 
and clinging to the under side of the large limbs as easily 
as if right side up. 
The pairs remain together all the year round, and their 
housekeeping commences early in the spring with none 
of the grotesque demonstration so usual among birds. 
Quietly a cavity in an oak or a dead pine is selected and 
filled almost to the brim with feathers, fur, short. hair, 
and moss by the united efforts of both busy workers. 
By May 1 the nest is complete and the mother bird has 
begun her cares. She is a close sitter, seldom leaving 
the nest for food, but depending on the supply brought 
by her mate and only indulging herself in a wing-stretch- 
ing once or twice a day. The male is very attentive, 
going to the nest so often that one wonders when his 
own meals are eaten. As soon as the young are hatched, 
which is twelve days after sitting begins, the female 
assists in the search for food and comes to the nest quite 
as often as the male. For the first few days the feeding 
is by regurgitation. 
