52 



Gbe TOarbler 



FIGURE II. — A SLENDER FOOTHOLD 



characteristic of both sexes, with the Rocky Mountain Nuthatch, there is 

 one greatly curious and suggestive call of the male. It consists of a soft, 

 long-drawn, " Tay-turt," four times repeated. This call so intimately re- 

 sembles a certain apparently playful call of the Pinyon Jay that one may 

 readily imagine the Nuthatch-call as possibly patterned after it.) 



Figure II portrays a probably normal tree-site of the Rocky Mountain 

 Nuthatch. The cavity, in this case, lay squarely beneath the dead limb on 

 which the male is sitting. The cavity is a round one, surrounded by solid 

 wood ; having been caused by the living wood entombing a dead limb. The 

 enclosing tree is utterly sound; though but a shell. It is a bull-pine.; of the 

 type so commonly characteristic of the Wyoming shale-hills. These loca- 

 tions held in common, with the varying forms and habits of nesting, by the 

 Nuthatch, the L,ong-tailed Chickadee, the Mexican Cross-bill and the Audu- 

 bon Warbler. 



Like its congeners this Nuthatch ordinarily makes no nest. The ma- 

 terial that surrounds the eggs is a strange conglomerate ; made up, in great- 

 er part, of dis-integrated pellets ejected by birds of prey or voided by coy- 

 ottes. It is most interesting to note ; that this material seems to be irregu- 



