The Nuthatch Family 67 



bird ever hatches a nut. But with the last syllable " hack " 

 the difficulty is all cleared up, as his habit of hacking or 

 chipping nuts, which he places in chinks of the bark or 

 wall, is well known. 



The nuthatch of England belongs to the species just 

 named. He does not wear a black hood or mantle, but 

 merely a black ribbon on the side of his head, enclosing 

 the eye. His upper parts are bluish gray, save the outer 

 tail feathers, which are black; his cheeks and throat are 

 white, his breast and belly buff, and his flanks and lower 

 tail-coverts chestnut red. A graphic English writer, 

 Dr. W. H. Hudson, gives the following enthusiastic 

 description of the little tobogganist of his native wood- 

 lands : 



" When I see him sitting quite still for a few moments 

 on a branch of a tree in his most characteristic nuthatch 

 attitude, on or under the branch, perched horizontally 

 or vertically, with head or tail uppermost, but always 

 with the body placed beetle-wise against the bark, head 

 raised, and the straight, sharp bill pointed like an arm 

 lifted to denote attention, at such times he looks less 

 Like a living than a sculptured bird, a bird cut out of 

 beautifully variegated marble blue-gray, buff, and chest- 

 nut, and placed against the tree to deceive the eye. The 

 figure is so smooth and compact, the tints so soft and 

 stone-like ; and when he is still, he is so wonderfully still, 

 and his attitude so statuesque! But he is never long 

 still and when he resumes his lively, eccentric, up-and- 

 down and sidewise motions, he is interesting in another 



