* 
Pyamy NuTHATCH. 
Sitta pygmaa VIGORS. 
@ s*HIS LITTLE bird seems to have been a special favorite with our gifted naturalist, 
¥ 9 Dr. Elliott Coues, when stationed among the mountains of Arizona. What he 
has written about the Pyemy NurHarcu is so beautifully expressed, and, moreover, so 
unlikely to reach the general reader, that I cannot refrain from quoting at least a 
part of it. , 
“T found it at all seasons about Fort Whipple; but in the pine-forests of that 
elevated locality it is most abundant in summer. It seems to prefer the pines, especially 
during the breeding season, and ranges up the mountains to an altitude of 8 or 10,000 
feet, or to the timber-line; at other times it is more generally distributed through the 
deciduous woods of lower levels. During my residence at Fort Whipple, the habits of 
these birds were to me a study which never failed to please. If I loitered in listless 
mood among the magnificent pines, ‘the world forgetting, by the world forgot,’ absorbed 
in the sensuous undercurrent 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 dis- 
played 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 necessity? 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 Nuthatches 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 tree with 
desultory flight, calling incessantly to each other as if to make sure that all the com- 
pany 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 appear- 
ance, and they habitually resort to the terminal branchlets and foliage of the tree-tops. 
Their diet is a mixed ‘one, consisting in part of minute insects which lurk in the cracks 
17 
