166 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



within their reach. If constantly supplied with fresh bark, they never tire of 

 searching each corner and crevice for insect food, clinging to it in every imagin- 

 able attitude with their strong claws whilst beating all the while with their beaks 

 a very ' devil's tattoo,' unpleasantly suggestive, in its persistent monotony, of the 

 busiest moments of a coffin-maker." 



The Nuthatch is one of our early breeders, usually commencing to build 

 about the middle of April; the site chosen is most frequently a hole in a tree, 

 generally in a branch, but sometimes close to the ground ; a hole in a wall is not 

 infrequently chosen, and rarely in the side of a haystack ; the single recorded nest 

 of this type in the British Museum having been mentioned by almost every writer 

 on British Birds, on account apparently of its weight : the entrance to the hole, 

 in which the apology for a nest is placed, being always filled up with clay until 

 only a small aperture is left for the passage of the birds in and out. Lord Lilford 

 speaks of their using also old mortar or cement, which they must somehow have 

 managed to moisten and render serviceable ; possibly they mixed it with wet clay. 



The nest itself consists merely of a few leaves, often of oak ; a few scales of 

 fir-bark ; or a little dry grass ; at some distance from the entrance to the hole. 

 The eggs, which vary in number from five to eight, very closely resemble those 

 of the Great Tit, but are larger and frequently with deeper red-brown spots, bolder 

 in character and intermixed with lavender or greyish shell-spots : the different 

 forms of the egg are just what one finds among the Tits, the spots larger or 

 smaller, evenly distributed, massed in a zone near the larger end, or forming an 

 irregular patch at that end. 



The song of the Nuthatch consists of a prolonged soft whistle, followed by a 

 bubbling twitter ; but its call-note is a shrill whit-whit. The food in summer 

 principally consists of insects, in search of which it sometimes comes in contact 

 with various Tits or even the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, towards which it ex- 

 hibits its very pugnacious disposition. In the autumn, when insects are becoming 

 scarce, it turns to nuts, beech-mast, seeds of conifers, and berries ; and in the 

 winter it will approach houses to feed on refuse scraps. 



As a cage-bird the Nuthatch is constantly increasing in popularity ; as the 

 numbers now exhibited at our shows testify. When reared from the nest it 

 becomes just as tame and confiding as the species of Tits, running over and 

 examining its owner in the same manner ; but even adult birds caught wild, 

 although at first they show impatience of captivity after the manner of all the 

 Tit-like birds, do not (as Seebohm asserts) necessarily die on that account : perhaps 

 if kept in a small cage the violent blows which they deal in their frantic rage at close 

 confinement after liberty, may injure the front of the skull and thus produce death; 



