58 AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



less on his perch, repeating this call at short intervals, for half an hour 

 at a time. Another bird at a distance will be doing the same, and the 

 two appear to be answering one another. He also has another call, 

 not so loud and piercing; but more melodious: a double note, repeated 

 two or three times, with something liquid and gurgling in the sound, 

 suggesting the musical sound of lapsing water. These various notes 

 and calls are heard incessantly until the young are hatched, when the 

 birds at once become silent. 



The nesting habits of cassia are quite similar to those of our Ameri- 

 can forms, with the following interesting exception. The doorway 

 of the cavity constituting the bird's domicile is plastered up with clay, 

 made viscid by the nuthatch's glutinous saliva, leaving in the center a 

 circular hole just large enough to afford entrance and exit for the little 

 owner. Says the author quoted above: "When the sitting bird is in- 

 terfered with, she defends her treasures with great courage, hissing 

 like a wryneck, and vigorously striking at her aggressor with her 

 sharp bill." Like our common white-breast, the British bird may 

 be attracted to human dwellings by furnishing him a regular supply of 

 food suited to his taste, and may grow so trustful as to come when 

 called, and even to catch morsels thrown to him in the air. In the 

 forest he often hammers so loudly on a resonant branch that his tattoo 

 is mistaken for that of a woodpecker. The interior of the nest "contains 

 a bed of dry leaves, or the filmy flakes of the inner bark of a fir or ce- 

 dar, on which the eggs are laid." 



In northern Europe another form of the nuthatch guild is found, and 

 is known scientifically as Sitta enivpea, whose under parts are white 

 without any washing of buff on the breast. It will thus be seen that 

 the geographical difference is just the reverse in the two types of 

 nuthatches in America and Europe; while with us the white-breasted 

 nuthatch occupies the central latitudes and the red-breast the more 

 northern, in Europe the precise opposite prevails. 



The Levant furnishes a most charming addition to the feathered 

 brotherhood now under consideration. The scientific gentlemen have 

 christened it Sifta syn'accu and its common name is the rock nuthatch, 

 an appellation that is most appropriate, for its chosen haunts are rocky 

 cliffs, over the faces of which it scuttles in the most approved nuthatch 

 fashion, head up or down, as the whim seizes it, clinging with its 

 sharp claws to the chinks, ledges, protuberances and rough surfaces of 

 the rocky walls. A little larger than its European cousin, its markings 

 are quite similar. In Syria it is common as far north as the southern 



