The White-breasted Nuthatches 
The value of the service which this bird and 
his associates perform for the horticulturist is 
very considerable. There should be as heavy a 
penalty imposed upon one who wantonly kills a 
Nuthatch or a Chickadee, as upon one who enters 
an enclosure and cuts down an orchard or a shade 
tree. 
The Nuthatch has a variety of notes, all 
distinguished by a peculiar nasal quality. When 
hunting with the troop he gives an occasional 
softly resonant tut or tut-tut, as if to remind his 
fellows that all’s well. The halloo note is more 
decided, tin, pronounced a la francaise. By 
means of this note and by using it in combination, 
they seem to be able to carry on quite an ani¬ 
mated conversation, calling across from tree to 
tree. During the mating season, and often at 
other times, they have an even more decided and 
distinctive note, quonk, quonk, quonk, or ho-onk, 
ho-onk, in moderate pitch, and with deliberation. 
They have also a sort of trumpeting song, but 
this is rarely heard in the West; and, indeed, all 
the notes of the Slender-billed Nuthatch have a 
softened and subdued character as compared with 
those of the eastern bird, typical S. carolinensis. 
In selecting a nesting site the Slender-billed 
Nuthatch oftenest chooses an opening prepared 
by other species,—a rotting knot-hole, a weather 
crack, or a woodpecker’s food prospect, giving ac¬ 
cess to some capacious interior. The hollow may 
be laboriously remodelled; and this Nuthatch does, on occasion, excavate 
a nest de novo; but the very general avoidance of unnecessary labor on the 
part of the western bird has probably given rise to its special character, 
viz., a relatively slenderer and weaker bill. Both sexes share the labor 
of excavation, and when the cavity is somewhat deepened, one bird re¬ 
moves the chips while the other delves. Like all the hole-nesting species 
of this family, but unlike the woodpeckers, the nuthatches provide for 
their home an abundant lining of moss, fur, feathers, and the like. This 
precaution would not be necessary so far as warmth is concerned, in the 
lower portions of its range, even though it appears to nest in March; but 
elsewhere the bird crowds the season, and in the mountains is quite 
indifferent to lingering snows. 
640 
Taken in Inyo County Photo by the Author 
A HESITANT APPROACH 
