THE NUTHATCH. 55 



Now is the only time to ascertain the short- 

 winged summer birds ; for, when the leaf is out, 



when I was expecting the transit of some wood-pigeons under 

 a birch tree, with my gun in my hand, I observed a little 

 ash-coloured bird squat himself on one of the large lateral 

 trunks over my head, and after some observation, began to 

 tap loudly, or rather solidly, upon the wood, and then proceed 

 round and round the branch, it being clearly the same thing to 

 him whether his nadir or zenith were uppermost. I shot, 

 and the bird fell ; there was a lofty hedge between us, and 

 when I got over, he had removed himself. It was some time 

 before I secured him ; and I mention this, because the man- 

 ner in which he eluded me was characteristic of his cunning. 

 He concealed himself in holes at the bottom of a ditch, so 

 long as he heard the noise of motion ; and when all was still, 

 he would scud out and attempt to escape. A wing was broken, 

 and I at length got hold of him. He proved small, but very 

 fierce, and his bite would have made a child cry out. The 

 elbow joint of his wing being thoroughly shattered, and 

 finding that he had no other wound, I cut off the dangling 

 limb, and put him into a large cage with a common lark. 

 The wound did not in the least diminish his activity, nor 

 yet his pugnacity, for he instantly began to investigate all 

 means of escape ; he tried the bores, then tapped the wood- 

 work of the cage, and produced a knocking sound, which 

 made the room re-echo ; but after finding his efforts vain, 

 he then turned upon the lark, ran under him with his ga- 

 ping beak to bite, and effectually alarmed his far more gentle 

 and elegant antagonist. Compelled to separate them, the 

 nuthatch (for this bird I discovered him to be, by turning 

 over the leaves of an Ornithologia) was put into a smaller 

 cage of plain oak wood and wire. Here he remained all 

 night ; and the next morning his knocking, or tapping with 

 his beak, was the first sound I heard, though sleeping in 

 an apartment divided from the other by a landing place. 

 He had food given to him, minced chicken and bread 

 crumbs, and water. He ate and drank with a most perfect 

 impudence, and the moment he had satisfied himself, turned 

 again to his work of battering the frame of his cage, the 

 sound from which, both in loudness and prolongation of 

 noise, is only to be compared to the efforts of a fashionable 

 footman, upon a fashionable door, in a fashionable square. 

 He had a particular fancy for the extremities of the corner 



