Hints to Audubon Workers. 



39 



and Mrs. Spratt, the chickadee whistling his 

 merry chick-a-dee-dee, dee, dee as he cHngs to 

 a twig in the tree top, ^nd the nuthatch 

 answering back with a jolly little yank, 

 yank, yank, as he hangs, head down, on 

 the side of a tree trunk. What a comical 

 figure he makes there ; trying to get a look 

 at you, he throws his head back and 

 stretches himself away from the tree, till 

 you wonder he does not fall off. His black 

 cap and slate-blue coat are almost hidden, 

 he raises his white throat and breast up so 

 high. " Devil-down-head " he is called from 

 his habit of walking down the trees, for in- 

 stead of backing straight down or sidling 

 down backward as the woodpeckers do, he 

 prefers to obey the old adage and "follow 

 his nose." A lady forgetting his name 

 once aptly described him to me as "that 

 little upside-down bird." He will run 

 along the underside of a branch with as 

 much coolness as a fly would cross the 

 ceiling. 



One of his popular names is " sapsucker," 

 for our nuthatch has a sweet tooth, and 

 when the farmers tap the trees in spring he 

 " happens round " at the sugar bush to see 

 "what sort of maple syrup they are going 

 to have. He tests it well, taking a sip at 

 "the calf" where it oozes out at the gash- 

 ing of the axe, tasting it as it dries along 

 the spile, and finally on the rim of the 

 buckets. But his most interesting name is 

 — nuthatch! How does he come by it? 

 That seems a riddle. Some cold Novem- 

 ber day when you are overcome by ennui, 

 and think there is nothing left in the woods 

 to interest you, put by your melancholy 

 longing for summer, and in its place put 

 on a thick pair of boots, and go to visit the 

 beeches. In their tops are the nuthatches, 

 for they have deserted the tree trunks 

 for a frolic. They are beechnutting! And 

 that with as much zest as a party of school 

 children starting out with baskets and pails 

 on a holiday. Watch them now ! What 

 clumsy work they make of it, trying to 



cling to the beechnut burr and get the 

 nuts out, at the same time. It's a pity the 

 chickadee can't give them a few lessons ! 

 They might better have kept to their tree 

 trunks. Think what a sorry time Mrs. Spratt 

 would have had, had she tried to eat the 

 lean ! But they persist, and after tumbling 

 off from several burrs, finally snatch out a 

 nut and fly off with it as unconcernedly as 

 if they had been dancing about among the 

 twigs all their days. Away they go, till they 

 come to a maple or some other rough- 

 barked tree, when they stick the nut in be- 

 tween the ridges of the bark, hammer it 

 down, and then, when it is so tightly wedged 

 that the slippery shell cannot get away from 

 them, by a few sharp blows they hatch the 

 nut from the tree ! Through my glass I 

 watched a number of them this fall, and 

 they all worked in about the same way, 

 though some of them wedged their nuts 

 into cracks or holes in the body of the tree, 

 instead of in the bark. One of them 

 pounded so hard he spread his tail and 

 almost upset himself. 



The fun was so great a downy wood- 

 pecker tried it, and of all the big school 

 boys ! The excitement seemed to turn his 

 head, and he attacked a beechnut burr as 

 if he would close with it in mortal combat ! 



Though without any real song, the nut- 

 hatch has a delightful variety of notes. In 

 May his nasal henk-a, henk-a, henk-a comes 

 through the soft green woods as a pecu- 

 liarly peaceful caressing note, and his gentle 

 yang, yang, yang, is full of woodsy sug- 

 gestions. In the last of June, my note-book 

 records the sweet yah-ha of the nuthatch, 

 the %2xc\^ yang, yang, yang, and his nearest 

 approach to a song, the rapid yah-ha-ha- 

 ha-ha-ha. This is probably what Thoreau 

 gives as "To-what, what, what, what."* He 

 records it in March. In August and Septem- 

 ber the xvA^-aX ya?ik is sometimes run into an 

 accelerated half song. Thoreau gives the 

 ordinary winter note as quah, quah, and 

 * "Early Spring in Massachusetts," p. 70. 



