THE SYRIAN NUTHATCH 



and other soft materials is placed. Five white eggs are laid, 

 and the parents incubate them by turns. 



Mr. Hudson mentions a very curious fact in connexion 

 with the song of these birds, which appears to be, like their 

 nest, unique. " On meeting, the male and female, standing 

 close together and facing each other, utter their clear ringing 

 concert, one emitting loud single measured notes, while the 

 notes of its fellow are rapid, rhythmical triplets ; their voices 

 have a joyous character, and seem to accord, thus producing 

 a kind of harmony. It is very curious that the young birds, 

 when only partially fledged, are constantly heard in the nest 

 or oven apparently practising these duets in the intervals 

 when the parents are absent, notes utterly unlike the hunger 

 cry, which is like that of other fledglings." The same 

 gentleman also relates a strange story of some oven-birds 

 whose oven was built on the end of a beam which projected 

 from the wall of a neighbour's rancho at Buenos Ayres. 

 One of the pair had both legs crushed in a steel rat-trap ; 

 on being liberated, it flew to the oven and was seen no more, 

 having probably bled to death. Its mate uttered shrill 

 cries incessantly for some days, but on receiving no answer it 

 left the neighbourhood. Three days later it returned with 

 a new mate, and the two birds at once got to work and built 

 up the doorway of the oven, thus converting it into an 

 aerial tomb, on the top of which they built a second oven. 

 Mr. Hudson's neighbour was an old native, and it was not 

 strange, he adds, that " after witnessing the entombment of 

 one that died, he was more convinced than ever that the 

 little house builders are pious birds." 



The Syrian Nuthatch (Sitta neumayeri) is also a mud- 

 builder ; it makes its nest on the face of steep, overhanging 

 rocks, choosing, when possible, a situation with an easterly 

 aspect. Mr. Seebohm observed them in the crags about 



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