Ornitltuloyy of Corsica. 441 



ppccimeiis. Giglioli, wiitiiig in 181)0. !>a\ s tliat lie s-aw a 

 Nntliatcli on September 16^ 1877, at Poute alia Leccia, but 

 did not fire at it, believing it to be Silia ccesia. In the 

 spring of 1896 Dr. A. Koenig visited tlie forest of Vizzavona 

 and with considerable difficulty obtained five specimens, but 

 was too early for nests, wliile Mr. A. D. Sapswortb discovered 

 another colony in the early autumn of 1900, and brought 

 home skins. No eggs were, however, taken between 1884 

 and 1908^ when I was fortunate early in May in finding 

 se\eral pairs obviously breeding in pine-forest at over 

 .■^000 ft. Eeturning towards the end of the month, I took 

 three nests with eggs, and found a fourth with young during 

 two days spent in the forest. In 1909 two more nests with 

 < ggs were taken, and a tiiird proved to contain young about 

 a week old. Since then Dr. Schiebel has described the 

 juvenile plumage of the male, and Hitter von Tschusi's 

 collector has sent skins from the Vizzavona forest. 



It is satisfactory to be able to state that the bird is in no 

 danger of extermination, and is not, as Professor Giglioli 

 supposed, a vanishing form, confined to one isolated locality. 

 On the contrary, I have the best of reasons for believing that 

 it is widely but somewhat locally distributed in the pine- 

 forests of Corsica, and am aware of at least three localities, all 

 at considerable distances apart, in which the bird is tolerably 

 common. Owing to tlie broken nature of the ground and 

 the scarcity of roads, it is extremely difficult to explore the 

 country systematically, and as the Nuthatch spends most of 

 its time among the upper branches of the pines, so small a 

 biid is very easily overlooked except by those who are well 

 acquainted with its notes and habits. The nests, too, are, as 

 a rule, only obtainable with difiiculty and a considerable 

 amount of dangt r, for the wood is not soft enough for the 

 somewhat weak bill of this species to work until the tree is 

 advanced in decay. Such trees have generally lost all their 

 bark and stand out like bare white masts among the living- 

 trees. As a rule, they are rotten at the base, but being 

 slieltered from the wind by theii' neighbours and offering 

 little resistance owing to the absence of side branches^ thev 



