The Nuthatch Family 71 



plant fibers, for the little mason does not believe in 

 making bricks without straw. So well packed is the 

 inch-thick wall that a stiff knife blade must be used to 

 cut through it. While the natural color of the adobe 

 cottage is ash-gray, and therefore harmonizes with the 

 general hue of its surroundings, and also with the mezzo- 

 tints of the builder, yet he sometimes decorates it with 

 the gaily colored wings of moths caught in the chase and 

 attached to the plaster while it is fresh. The rock nut- 

 hatch is as expert a mixer of mortar as the well-known 

 cliff swallows of our own country, and his adobe dwellings 

 bear a close resemblance to theirs. 



It is interesting to note that the European nuthatch, 

 while nesting regularly in tree cavities, sometimes also 

 chooses the crannies of rocks, when he goes a little more 

 extensively into the plastering business ; but his skill is 

 not so well developed as that of his oriental cousin, whose 

 mud cottage is a model of its kind. 



