Concord, Mass.
1908
April 20
  Early morning sunny & calm; remainder of day cloudy
and cold with frequent flurries of snow. Wind west.
  On arriving here about the middle of March I found
a pair of White-bellied Nuthatches frequenting the elms about
our house as they are accustomed to do at this season.
Not long after this we put up a lump of suet in the
lilacs at the rear of the house. The Nuthatches soon found
and visited it daily. I saw them there together on the 
morning of April 8 but the female did not eat any of
the suet then and I thought she seemed listless & ailing.
On the morning of the 11th Gilbert found her lying dead
under one of the elms in our door yard. I skinned her
next day. She was in good flesh and her stomach was
full of the remains of larvae of insects. I could detect no
trace of any injury nor of disease. Her ovaries were not
developed no one of the ovaries being as large as the head of
a pin. After the death of his mate the male continued
to appear about the house but he did not stay there
long at any one time. We were absent from Concord on
the 15th & 16th and the Nuthatch was noted after our
return (on the evening of the 16th) until the morning of
the 19th when I saw him alone in the elms. A little
later that morning Gilbert saw two birds together at the
suet. They were there again this morning when I made
sure that one of them was a female & evidently mated to
our male. It would be interesting to know how far from
here he had to go to find her.
Our male Nuthatch loses his mate and eight days later appears with a new one  
  One of the pairs of Downy Woodpeckers drummed steadily
for an hour this morning on the dead elm branch over our 
shed where there has been a nest these past two years.
Downy drums at nest