528 BRITISH BIRDS. 



eleven pounds^ and measuring thirteen inches in height. The entrance to 

 the hole usually selected is often too large for the bird's taste, and it 

 plasters up the opening with clay, leaving a small hole for ingress. The 

 nest, placed generally at some little distance from the entrance, is crude 

 and simple in the extreme. Sometimes a little dead grass or a few dry 

 leaves are gathered together into little more than what might be termed a 

 substitute for a nest ; at others a few scraps of flaky bark from the fir trees 

 are used instead. Should the clay at the entrance to the nest-hole be 

 broken down, the birds will soon rebuild it again ; for they show a striking 

 affection for the locality they have chosen. The eggs of the Nuthatch are 

 from five to eight in number, and are pure white in ground-colour, 

 blotched and spotted with reddish brown, with underlying markings of 

 purplish grey. There are several striking varieties in the eggs of this 

 bird; but the eggs of a clutch generally resemble each other. For 

 instance, all the eggs in one clutch are evenly spotted over the entire 

 surface ; the eggs in another clutch have the markings almost exclusively 

 confined to a semiconfluent zone round the large end of each egg ; whilst 

 other clutches are finely and uniformly powdered with minute specks, 

 intermingled on the larger end of the eggs with larger and paler spots. 

 The markings differ considerably in size ; and on a few specimens fine specks 

 of very rich blackish brown are seen, and more rarely one or two very fine 

 streaks of the same colour. The type with the semiconfluent zone very 

 closely resembles certain varieties of the eggs of the Greenfinch; but the 

 pure white ground-colour and reddish instead of purplish tinge of the 

 spots serve to distinguish them. They vary from -85 to -75 inch in length, 

 and from '6 to '53 inch in breadth. 



In confinement the Nuthatch makes an engaging and cheerful pet, as 

 those persons who have kept them abundantly testify. But the bird must 

 be taken young ; otherwise its inherent restlessness causes it to make its 

 cage-life one long effort to escape, which finally proves its death. So tame, 

 however, have these birds become when brought up from the nest, that 

 they have been known to creep over their owner's body in the same 

 way that they do on a tree- trunk, as mentioned by Jardine in his edition 

 of Wilson's ' American Ornithology/ 



The southern form of the Nuthatch has the general colour of the upper 

 parts, including the two central tail-feathers, the secondaries, and the 

 margins to the primaries, clear slate-grey ; from the base of the bill a 

 black band reaches to each eye and extends behind the eye along the 

 side of the neck; all the tail-feathers except the two centre ones are 

 black for about three fourths of their length, broadly tipped with slate- 

 grey, and with a white patch separating these two colours on both wets 

 of the outermost feather and on the inner web of the next two feathers 

 on each side. The cheeks and ear-coverts, the upper throat, and the 



