WHITE-BELLIED NUTHATCH. 103 



school-children starting out with baskets and pails 

 on a holiday. Watch them now ! What clumsy 

 work they make of it, trying to cling to the 

 beechnut burr and get the nuts out at the same 

 time. It 's a pity the chickadee can't give them 

 a few lessons ! They might better have kept to 

 their tree trunks. But they persist, and after 

 tumbling off from several burrs, finally snatch 

 out a nut and fly off with it as calmly as if they 

 had been dancing about among the twigs all their 

 days. Away they go till they come to a maple or 

 some other rough-barked tree, when they stick 

 the nut in between the ridges of the bark, ham- 

 mer it down, and then, when it is so tightly 

 wedged that the slippery shell cannot get away 

 from them, by a few sharp blows they hatch the 

 nut from the tree ! Through my glass I watched 

 a number of them this fall, and they all worked 

 in about the same way, though some of them 

 wedged their nuts far into cracks or holes in the 

 body of the tree, instead of in the bark. One of 

 them pounded so hard he spread his tail and al- 

 most upset himself. The fun was so great a 

 downy woodpecker tried it, and of all the big 

 school-boys ! The excitement seemed to turn his 

 head, and he attacked a beechnut burr as if he 

 would close with it in mortal combat ! 



Though without any real song, the nuthatch 

 has a delightful variety of notes. In May his 

 nasal henk-a, henk-a, henk-a, comes through the 



