THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THIRD SERIES. 
Vou. IV.] FEBRUARY, 1880. __ [No. 38. 
ON THE NESTING OF EE NUTHATCH, 
AS OBSERVED. IN NORFOLK. . 
By F. NoreGate. 
In the cultivated lands and carefully tended woods of Norfolk 
a dead tree is seldom allowed to stand till it is rotten and soft 
enough for the Nuthatch, Wryneck, or Marsh Tit to bore their 
own nesting holes. Here and there an old dead alder may be 
accidentally left in a rough meadow or on a common, and 
occasionally a dead Scotch pine may be seen still standing on 
some neglected spot on the light lands. Such trees are generally 
riddled by a dozen or more Nuthatches’ holes, most of which only 
penetrate about an inch deep, the wood being apparently still too 
hard for these birds, 
The Nuthatch therefore, to a great extent, depends on the 
Great Spotted Woodpecker as an engineer. In taking possession 
of the nesting holes so industriously bored (through the living 
wood into the softer rotten heart-wood) by this Woodpecker, the 
Nuthatch has a formidable rival in the Starling, which bird (so 
far as my experience goes) usurps about ninety per cent. of the 
Green Woodpeckers’ nests as soon as they are bored, and nearly 
as many of the Great Spotted Woodpeckers’ nests also are used 
in their first or second year by Starlings. é 
The great preponderance in the number of Starlings makes 
the competition for nesting sites very serious for Nuthatches and 
Woodpeckers, especially for the latter birds, which, I believe, are 
not unfrequently obliged to lay their eggs on the ground. I once 
found a Green Woodpecker’s egg on the grass near the foot of 
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