340 THE NUTCRACKER. 



The nest is described by M. Malm who met with several, 

 though unoccupied, during his stay in Lapland as con- 

 structed without much art, of lichens and blades of grass. 

 The eggs, according to Nilsson, are five to six in number, 

 and in size somewhat less than those of the magpie. 



The Nutcracker (Not-Kraka, Sw. ; Nucifraga Caryoca- 

 tactes, Temm.) was only occasionally met with in rny vicinity. 

 The more central parts of Scandinavia are its proper home ; 

 but with its limits to the northward Swedish naturalists 

 seem unacquainted. It is rather scarce in Denmark. 



During the summer the favourite resorts of this bird are 

 Barr-skogar ; but in the autumn, when it roams about in 

 flocks, it is met with in woods composed of oak, beech, and 

 hazel. Its food during the summer consists chiefly of insects 

 and larvae, which it seeks under the bark of trees ; as also of 

 worms and snails. In the autumn it eats acorns, nuts, the 

 seed of the Scotch-fir and spruce-pine, mountain-ash berries, 

 &c. Acorns and nuts it swallows altogether whole, fills its 

 crop with them, and flies away to some secure place, where it 

 casts them up again ; and either hides them as a supply for 

 the winter, or breaks them in pieces, eats the kernels, and 

 swallows even the shells, which serve to bruise, or rather 

 grind the kernels. These nut-shells are at first large and 

 jagged ; but by friction become less in size and round. 

 During the winter it searches for nuts beneath the snow, and 

 in lieu of better food, for oats amongst the horse- dung on 

 the road. It preys on birds captured in snares, as also on 

 the young of birds and their eggs. 



The nutcracker makes its nest in the hollow of a tree. 

 The eggs, five to six in number, are dirty yellow-brown, 

 marked with small rust-coloured and dark-brown spots. 



