LEA.DING TRAITS OF THE PYGMY NUTHATCH 141 



of merely animal existence, the vivacity of these ubiquitous 

 little creatures seldom failed to break the spell of my dream, 

 and bring me back to the realities that surrounded me. If I 

 hurried breathless through the woods, in eager pursuit of some 

 feathered prize that seemed likely to escape me, how did my 

 haste in quest of a coveted thing differ from the bustling activity 

 and restless energy they displayed in their search for what 

 seemed good to them ! The naturalist is never alone; solitude 

 is not for him ; he can call nothing his own — not even his 

 thoughts, which he must be content to share with all the forms 

 of life about him, and suffer to be carried beyond his control. 

 " How singularly," I have said to myself, " how perfectly, do 

 these busy troops of birds illustrate the waste of nervous force ! 

 Will they never learn to make haste slowly "? Are they so full of 

 energy that such incessant motion becomes a pleasure — a neces- 

 sity ? And after all, what does this eager scrambling amount 

 to? They make a living by it, to be sure, and that is something ; 

 but so do some of the laziest people. Perhaps they like it ; 

 perhaps they cannot help it. That may be a flock of young 

 birds, relishing their work with the zest of enthusiasts who 

 have yet to learn the lesson that hard work teaches ; this may 

 be a lot of old ones, no longer buoyant, yet equally eager, for 

 to them work has become a painful necessity, since habit has 

 rendered idleness intolerable." 



With such incessant activity as this do the Pygmy Nut- 

 hatches go about their daily avocations. With the appearance 

 of the earlier broods the different families unite, and the busy 

 throng roams through the woods, straggling from tree to ti'ee 

 with desultory flight, calling incessantly to each other as if to 

 make sure that all the company keep together. They show 

 some little preference in the matter of their hunting grounds, 

 more rarely scrambling about the trunks than among the smaller 

 branches of the trees, like the Brown-headed Nuthatches, which 

 they resemble so closely in appearance, and they habitually resort 

 to the terminal bran chlets andfoliage of the tree-tops. Theirdiet 

 is a mixed one, consisting in part of the minute insects which 

 lurk in the cracks of the bark, in part of the seeds of conifers, 

 and doubtless other small hard fruits. Their sociability is a 

 prominent trait ; indeed, they may almost be called gregarious 

 at all times excepting during the breeding season. Flocks of 

 a dozen or twenty, and even up to fifty or a hundred, are not 

 seldom seen ; and in the same company numbers of Titmice 

 and Warblers may often be found. They fire extremely noisy 



