NUTHATCH 647 



snows are melted, and this fact coupled with that of its becoming, like 

 a JAY, silent in the breeding-season, when at other times it is rather 

 noisy than not, will account for the mystery which so long en- 

 wrapped its domestic arrangements ; but, now that the secret has 

 been divulged, nests and eggs have been found without much diffi- 

 culty in various parts of Europe, and contrary to what was for 

 many years believed, the nest seems to be invariably built on the 

 bough of a tree, some 20 feet from the ground, and is a comparatively 

 large structure of sticks lined with grass. 'The eggs are of a very 

 pale bluish-green, sometimes nearly spotless, but usually more or less 

 freckled with pale olive or ash-colour. The chief food of the Nut- 

 cracker, though it at times searches for insects on the ground, 

 appears to be the seeds of fir-trees, which it extracts as it holds the 

 cones in its foot, and it has been questioned whether the bird has 

 the faculty of cracking nuts properly so called with its bill, 

 though that can be used with much force and, at least in confine- 

 ment, with no little ingenuity. Considerable difference has been 

 observed in the form and size of the bill of examples of this species, 

 but as in the case of the HuiA (page 437) this is now supposed to 

 depend on the sex that of the cock being stout and short, while 

 in the hen it is long and thin. The bird is about the size of a Jay, 

 and of a dark sooty-brown colour spangled with white, nearly each 

 body-feather ending in a tear-shaped patch of that colour. Beside 

 the European species, which also extends into Northern or Central 

 Asia, three others, very nearly akin to it, have been described from 

 the Himalayas. Of their American cousin, Clark's Crow, as it is 

 called (Picicorvus columbianus), inhabiting only the western slopes of 

 the Rocky Mountains, and discovered during the famous expedition 

 of Lewis and Clark to the mouth of the Columbia River in 1804-6, 

 an excellent account has been given by Dr. Coues (Ibis, 1872, pp. 

 52-59). 



The old supposition that the Nut-crackers had any affinity to 

 the Piddse (WOODPECKER) or were intermediate in position between 

 them and the Corvidse (CROW) is now known to be wholly erroneous, 

 for they undoubtedly belong to the latter Family. 



NUTHATCH, in older English NUTHACK, and locally NUT- 

 JOBBER, from its habit of hacking or chipping nuts, which it 

 cleverly fixes, as though in a vice, in a chink or crevice of the 

 bark of a tree, and then hammers them with the sharp point of 

 its bill till the shell is broken. This bird was long thought to be 

 the Sitta europsea of Linnaeus ; but that is now admitted to be the 

 northern form, with the lower parts white, and its buff-breasted 

 representative in central, southern, and western Europe, including 

 England, is known as Sitta cxsia. It is not found in Ireland, and 

 in Scotland its appearance is merely accidental. Without being 



