214 
NESTS AND EGGS OF 
are nearly one and a half feet. The entrance thereto is generally wide 
enough to admit of easy entrance, but towards the bottom the cavity ex- 
pands into a sort of room. In the North these chambers are lined with 
warm and soft materials, snch as hair, feathers, wool, down and fur, which 
are loosely thrown together. Audubon affirms that they build no nest, 
which may have been true in his day, but the statement is not borne out 
by recent observations. A nest in the writer’s collection, from the South, 
offex’S no material variation from sjxecimens from the most northern 
localities. 
In the selection of a cavity the birds sometimes make mistakes, as 
instanced by E. W. Nelson, Esq., in his valuable pamphlet on the Birds 
of Northeastern Illinois. In this case the Nuthatches had selected for 
nesting purposes a knot hole in a lai’ge oak, at a height of about twenty- 
five feet from the ground. The hole was large enough to admit the 
human hand, and several inches in depth. Within were the remnants of 
a squirrel’s nest, which nearly filled the cavity. After working steadily 
for about a week until the nest was nearly i-eady for occupancy, a pair 
of flying-squirrels, the previous owners of the hollow, seized the premises, 
and the birds, despondent and aggrieved, were compelled to move else- 
whei’e. Had these jxatient little builders been aware of the method which 
their Eui’opeau cousin adopts to keep out unfriendly intrudei'S — namely, 
that of plastering up the entrance to their nest, and thus contracting the 
opening, they would have been spared the pains of seeing their nearly 
furnished conxpartment occupied by creatures of the remotest kinship. 
By the first of May, or thereabouts, the female commences to deposit 
her complement of six eggs, which she does in as many consecutive days. 
She now immediately enters upon the process of incubation, and after 
twelve days of close sitting, bi’ings forth her tender brood. All the time 
that she is thus occupied, the male is very assiduous in his efforts to 
lighten her cai’es and solace her ennui. He supplies her with food, and 
when released from such lahox', spends the most of his time in the vicinity 
of the nest. A score of times during the coui’se of the day, pei’haps, she 
