86 ORNITHOLOGIST 
Nest of the Red-bellied Nuthatch. 

BY WILLIAM L. KELLS, ONTARIO, CANADA. 
As many persons have requested me to try and 
obtain for them the eggs of this species, (Sétta 
canadensis,) and as it seems that but little is 
known of its nidification, or indeed of its general 
habits, I think that perhaps a short sketch of 
what I know on the subject may be interesting to 
many. In Peel, the home of my early days, 
where I first began to study, from the unwritten 
book of nature, the pleasing science of ornitholo- 
gy, this bird was unknown to me; though the 
White-bellied species, (Sitta carolinensis), was 
common, and often came under my observation. 
Especially was this the case at the time of sugar- 
making, and at these times I had often noticed 
the latter variety nesting. The nature of the 
woods on the Peel lands was no doubt the cause 
of the absence of this species from that section, 
hard wood being the principal timber here, while 
as I now know the soft evergreen woods are the 
peculiar haunts and homes of the Red-bellied 
Nuthatch. When, however, I came to reside in 
North Wallace, I was struck with the peculiar 
appearance of the Nuthatches that I saw in the 
evergreen woods there when compared with those 
I had previously seen, and still occasionally ob- 
served among the hard wood timber, but the idea 
that they might be a different species did not yet 
occur to me, and not until some years afterwards, 
when I obtained Ross’ Birds of Canada did I be- 
come aware that there existed two species of these 
birds in the woods of Canada; for my previous 
text book, Cuvier’s Animal Kingdom, gave me no 
information on the subject. 
Having, however, obtained this information, I 
identified the species at once, and knew much of 
their distinguishing habits and peculiar haunts. 
But previous to this, in the month of June of my 
second year’s residence in Wallace, as I was eut- 
ting down some timber on the margin of a beaver- 
meadow that intersected my farm, and where the 
bush was composed chiefly of linden, black-ash 
and several kinds of evergreens, my attention was 
attracted by the action of a pair of Nuthatches 
whose color and notes I observed differed from 
those of another pair whose nesting place I had 
disturbed in the sugar-bush on the other side of 
the meadow earlier in the season. These birds 
were continually going in and coming out of a 
Woodpecker-like hole in the top of an old linden 
stub about twenty feet from the ground, evidently 
feeding young, and during the day the branches 
of one of the trees that I was felling struck this 
and brought it to the earth. Upon examination 
[ Vol. 11-No. 6 
I found, to my regret, and the great distress of the 
parent birds, that the cavity in the old tree had 
contained the nest and three young of the Nut- 
hatch, which were about a week old. but fatally 
injured by the fall of their birthplace. The cavity 
in which this nest was placed was like that of a 
small Woodpecker’s, and the nest itself, (like that 
of a Blackbird) was composed chiefly of fine strips 
of fibrous bark. I have long felt certain that it 
belonged to and was a type of the nest of the Red- 
bellied Nuthatch. Of late years I have rambled 
through wet log strewn, brush-entangled, swampy 
woods where these birds make their homes, but 
no sight of their nesting places has since rewarded 
my toil, though they are quite common here in 
winter, and often in mid-summer their pleasant 
notes fall on the listening ear, from the balsams, 
or high up among the pine tree tops. Mr. Allen, 
a gentleman of Toronto, writing in Zhe Ontario 
Farmer in 1869, on the subject of ornithology, re- 
marked regarding this species: “The nest of this 
Nuthatch is generally made at the bottom of (a 
cavity in) some dead stump at no great height 
from the ground. The eggs, four in number, are 
small, white, with a deep blush, and sprinkled 
with reddish dots.’ It seems, however, that the 
general nesting habits of this species are as yet 
but little known, and much interest and curiosity 
must exist in the minds of ornithologists until 
more is understood about them. 
pd i Agha 
Nesting of the Rufous Hummingbird 
in California. 
BY W. OTTO EMERSON, HAYWARDS, CALIFORNIA. 
While out looking ata Western Red-tail’s nest, 
at an old sandstone quarry, in a caion some four 
miles from Haywards, on March 7th, 1886, | heard 
the buzzing of a Hummer near me. I took a moss- 
covered seat on the rocks, and soon saw a Rufous 
Hummingbird, (Selasphorus rufus), fly out from a 
mass of wild blackberries that hung down over 
the rocks and formed a cool, shelted bower under 
the overbangivg vines and rocks, On stepping up 
to the place, the female flew into the vines, 
hovered here and there, rather than on what 
seemed to be a bit of green moss about as large as 
a walnut, which was placed on a slender vine. 
On getting up on a large mass of rocks, just below 
the level of the nest, I could look upon her; she 
flew off down to a creek. 
I could see two pinkish fresh eggs as they lay 
on their bed of white willow cotton, while stand- 
ing there contemplating as to whether I had best 
take them or not, my eye caught sight of another 
bit of green moss, just on a level with the other 
