584 BRITISH BIRDS. 



in the colour of the plumage has been in a diametrically opposite direction ; 

 for the brown parts are browner, and the white on the feathers is less 

 developed. 



The Nutcracker is one of those birds to which a special interest seems to 

 attach, in consequence of the mystery which for so many years surrounded 

 its nest and eggs. When Naumann wrote his great work on the birds of 

 Germany, and Macgillivray published his wonderful ( History of British 

 Birds/ nothing whatever was known of the nidification of the Nutcracker. 

 We have consequently only very meagre accounts of this bird from the two 

 great ornithologists, who, more than any others, seem to have combined an 

 intimate acquaintance with the life-history of birds in their native haunts, 

 founded on a habit of accurate observation and the necessary opportunities 

 for its exercise, with the requisite literary ability and the patient mastery 

 of detail without which it is impossible to write graphically on these 

 interesting subjects. Of late years, however, a flood of light has been 

 thrown on the history of this bird. Not to mention many excellent articles 

 in continental publications, it is only necessary to refer to the interesting 

 accounts communicated by Prof. Newton of the discovery of the nest in 

 Bornholm by Pastor Theobald (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1862, p. 207), and of the 

 eggs two years later (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1867, p. 162, pi. xv. fig. 2), and an 

 equally interesting account of the discovery of both nest and eggs in the 

 Black Forest by Herr Schiitt (Ibis, 1862, p. 365, translated from the 

 1 Journal f iir Ornithologie ') . In the face of such interesting and elaborate 

 details, Morris's account of the Nutcracker, in the second edition of his 

 ' British Birds/ published in 1870, " revised, corrected, and enlarged/' in 

 which this bird is represented as being " dispersed throughout America," 

 and breeding " in holes of decayed trees, which they scoop out like the Wood- 

 peckers," can only be looked upon as the work of an impostor. 



The Nutcracker is one of those birds which seems entirely to change its 

 habits during the breeding-season. In winter it is remarkable for its 

 extraordinary tameness. During my visit to Siberia in 1877 I saw 

 a great deal of this bird. As we sledged over the snow above the ice 

 down the Yenesay in April, we saw the first Nutcracker in lat. 64. From 

 that time we rarely missed these birds at the different places where we 

 stopped to change horses. At most stations one or two were silently 

 flitting round the houses, feeding under the windows amongst the Crows, 

 perching on the roof or on the top of a pole, and, if disturbed, silently 

 flying, almost like an Owl, to the nearest spruce, where they sat con- 

 spicuously perched on a flat branch, and allowed themselves to be 

 approached within easy shot. I had no difficulty in securing eight 

 examples with which to give my " muddle-headed Hebrew " lessons in 

 bird-skinning. When we reached our steam-yacht the ' Thames/ we 

 found them quite common and remarkably tame. Outside the door of 



