684 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE. 
or country. In the Lower Peninsula there 
probably is not a town or village in which 
this bird is not frequently to be seen if looked 
for, and in most localities it is a regular in- pig 147. Wing of White-breasted 
habitant of parks and shade trees, not only Nuthatch, showing very short first 
: rar : Ae primary. (Original.) 
in the”suburbs, but even in the cities them- 
selves. Where this is not the case it is usually because the English Sparrow 
has occupied all the possible nesting places, and so the Nuthatch is found 
only during migration, or in winter. 
Its habits are too well known to need extended description. It is one 
of the most restless and energetic birds known, seldom quiet for a dozen 
seconds at a time, but usually running up and down the trunks and larger 
branches of trees, often with a beech-nut or acorn in its bill, and occasionally 
seen hammering (that is, hatching”) that bit of food with its sharp bill, 
having previously wedged the nut into some crevice of the bark. At 
other times it may be seen carrying bits of acorn meat or the kernels of 
seeds which it has shelled, and if watched it will be seen to crowd these 
into crevices of the bark or hide them in natural or artifical holes in the 
trunks of trees or the cracks of fence posts, whence undoubtedly it some- 
times extracts them again in time of need. 
, ‘Although abundant throughout the year in most places, there is never- 
theless a migration of the species as a whole, a swinging of all the in- 
div.duals southward in winter and northward in summer, so that we are 
not sure that the individuals which nest with us are the same which we 
see in midwinter. Even in summer this species does not seem to be very 
abundant in the Upper Peninsula, at all events, not equally abundant 
in all parts. Most of our reports from north of 45° speak of the bird as 
rare, or at least not very common, but here and there observers find 
it abundant and nesting. In the southern part of the state it is fully 
as abundant in winter as in summer, but for a time in March and again 
in October it seems to be more abundant than at any other period. 
This bird is known sometimes to nest very early in the season; the writer 
saw one carrying nesting material into a hole in a brick wall at the Agricult- 
ural College on March 9, 1896, and another was seen taking food into a hole 
in a tree in the neighboring woods on April 11, 1896, which would seem 
to show that it was then feeding young. At the present writing (April 12, 
1912) we have a pair under observation on the College campus which are 
feeding young in a knot-hole in an oak. On the other hand, we have 
records of nearly a dozen sets of eggs, all, with one exception, taken in 
May, the exception being a set of nine taken in Kalamazoo county April 
27, 1889 by the late Richard B. Westnedge. Other nests taken by the 
same collector are as follows: Four eggs May 25, 1887, four eggs May 5, 
1888, eight eggs May 2, 1890, and three sets of eight, eight and seven 
respectively on May 2, 1890. Mr. Samuel Spicer of Goodrich, Genesee 
county, took a set of four eggs May 6, 1888, and Leon J. Cole took a nest 
of eight eggs at Grand Rapids May 4, 1897. These facts suggest the 
possibility of two broods, one hatched in April and the other late in May, 
although this is contrary to the statements of most authors, from Audubon 
down. 
A nest taken by Mr. Trombley, at Petersburg, is described as follows: 
“The nest was in a dry basswood stub about twenty-five feet from the 
ground. The hole was only about six inches deep, but was quite large, 
at least eight or ten inches in diameter, not a knot-hole but apparently 
