NUTCRACKER. 585 



the sailors' room half a dozen were busy picking amongst the refuse 

 thrown out by the cook. Their tameness was quite absurd. They allowed 

 us to go within three feet of them ; and sometimes they even permitted us 

 to touch them with a stick. They are wonderfully sociable birds. At 

 one time I counted as many as eight in one tree together. Whilst the 

 sailors were working at the ship, cutting away the ice all round her, there 

 were frequently two or three Nutcrackers in different parts of the rigging, 

 apparently watching the operations with great interest. They seem to be 

 well aware of the fact that scraps of food are always to be picked up where 

 men are congregated. Sometimes the Ostyak children shot one with a 

 bow and arrow ; and now and then one was caught by the dogs. On the 

 bushes round the houses they allowed us to approach within four or five 

 feet of them, and when disturbed moved to the nearest tree with a peculiar 

 slow, undulating. Jay-like flight. In the forest they flew from tree to 

 tree, screaming at each other. They have two distinct notes, both harsh 

 enough. One, probably the call-note, is a little prolonged and slightly 

 plaintive — a sort of Jcray, krmj ; the other is louder and more energetic, 

 and appears to be the alarm-note — a kr-kr-kr, almost as grating to the ear 

 as the note of a Corncrake. I was anxious to obtain a series of Nut- 

 cracker's eggs ; so all througli JMay, whilst the snow was deep on the 

 ground, I carefully protected them, and fed them with the bodies of the 

 birds which I skinned. I even took the trouble to cut up the bodies into 

 small pieces for them, and was delighted to find how eagerly they devoured 

 this food ; but they treated me in a most ungrateful manner. They con- 

 tinued to be abundant until about the 7t]i of June, when the snow was 

 pretty well melted from the ground; they then vanished altogether; and, 

 with the exception of a couple of birds I picked up (one on the 25th of 

 June in full moult), I saw no more of them until they reappeared in flocks 

 migrating south in August. The breeding-season of the Nutcracker in the 

 Arctic regions is evidently June and July — at least ten weeks later than 

 in Central Europe. Where they retired to breed I was unable to discover ■ 

 but it was doubtless on the higher ground which forms the watershed 

 between the Obb and the Yenesay, and between the latter river and the 

 Lena, far from the haunts of men — Russian or Ostyak, who all come 

 down to the great rivers to fish as soon as the snow melts and the ice 

 breaks up. 



The Nutcracker, like most other members of the Crow family, is almost 

 omnivorous. Caterpillars, wasps, and insects of various sorts have been 

 taken from its stomach. Its favourite food is the seeds of the Siberian 

 cedar, which it extracts from the cone with its bill very dexterously. It 

 also eats nuts, acorns, berries, and even land-shells of various kinds. It 

 has also the reputation of robbing the nests of other birds of their eggs 

 and young. 



