144 BRITISH BIRDS 



speckled all over with white, like a Starling. His beak 

 is decidedly corvine in shape, and yet he is strictly grani- 

 vorous, a vegetarian Crow in fact, and lives on seeds of 

 all kinds as well as nuts. The nest is placed in a hollow 

 in a tree (another deviation from corvine habits), and the 

 eggs, four to six in number, are dark greyish-olive with 

 brown streaks. The young are reared on worms and 

 insects as in the case of many other seed-eating birds. 



THE NUTHATCH. 



This is not a very common bird in Britain, nor a 

 very suitable one for caging; however, if it can be taken 

 young and brought up by hand from the nest, which is 

 readily done on ants' eggs and small mealworms, it be- 

 comes very tame, and is then sufficiently amusing; but it 

 is practically impossible to reconcile to captivity one that 

 has been caught when full grown. 



It is about 6 inches in length, i^ inches of which is 

 included in the tail, while the strong pointed bill is nearly 

 an inch long. The forehead is blue, and the rest of the 

 upper part of the body bluish-grey; the cheeks and throat 

 are white, and a band of black extends from the eye to 

 the back of the head on either side; the breast and belly 

 are orange-brown. The female is greyer. 



The Nuthatch is a wood-loving bird, and its nest is 

 placed in a hole in a tree, where four or five white 

 eggs speckled with red are deposited, sometimes on the 

 bare wood and, occasionally, with a little apology for a 

 nest under them. The young are fed on insects, chiefly 

 small caterpillars, which form the greater part of the food 

 of the parents too, although in winter they eat seeds and 

 berries, and evince much cleverness in extracting the ker- 

 nels of nuts and beech-mast, which they fix securely in a 

 crack of the bark of a branch and then drill with their 

 strong beak, turning round and round as they do so to 

 add additional impetus to the blows they deal. 



If kept indoors, they must be fed as recommended for 

 the Tits, but the cage they are put into should be entirely 



