The Red-breasted Nuthatch 
sational editorial matter which no 
thoughtful reader of the woods 
can overlook. The full war-dance 
song of the Red-breasted Nut¬ 
hatch, executed, for instance, 
when he hears the false notes of 
the California Screech Owl, is 
something like this: 
Nyaa nyaa, nyaa 
nyaa nyaa nyaa nya nya 
nya nya nya nya nya nya nya 
nya nya nya and so on, in an in¬ 
coherent strain of wild excitement, 
until he runs clean out of breath 
and quits, exhausted. The early 
notes of this orgic rhapsody are 
interrogative and penetrating; the 
succeeding notes are a sort of 
trumpeting challenge for the in¬ 
truder to show himself; failing 
which, the irate creeper drops into 
a lower, non-resonant series, of 
doubtful meaning and more doubt¬ 
ful morals. But the bird is not 
always angry, and the nasal call 
sounding on migration has a 
friendly quality about it which 
brings one hastening out-of-doors red-breasted nuthatch 
to greet the traveler again. 
When Dr. Cooper could write: 1 “I have not myself met with the 
bird in California,” it is perhaps not to be wondered at that our ideas 
of its relative distribution are still somewhat hazy, and accounts of its 
precise nesting habits in California lacking. It is a boreal-breeding, 
migratory species, and occurs in summer sparingly in the higher ranges 
of southern California, regularly throughout the timbered Sierras, and 
irregularly throughout the mountainous timbered districts of the north¬ 
western counties. The occurrence of birds in the mountains of Santa 
Cruz Island as late as May 2nd (1911), 2 I do not regard as conclusive 
evidence of breeding, as this species is very irregular in its migratory 
movements; and those individuals which do not purpose nesting until 
1 Ornithology of California, 1870, p. 55. 
2 Vide Howell in "Condor,” XIII., 1911, p. 210. 
645 
