ORNITHOLOGIST 



[Vol. 11-No. 6 



Nest of the Red-bellied Nuthatch. 



BY WILLIAM L. KELLS, ONTAKIO, CANADA. 



As many persons have requested mo to try and 

 obtain for them the eggs of this species, {Sittd 

 canadensis,) and as it seems that but little is 

 known of its nidification, or indeed of its general 

 habits, I think that perhaps a short sketch of 

 what I know on the subject may be interesting to 

 many. In Peel, the home of my early days, 

 where I first began to study, from the unwritten 

 book of nature, the pleasing science of ornitholo- 

 gy, this bird was unknown to me; though the 

 White-bellied species, {SUta caroUnensis), was 

 common, and often came under my observation. 

 Especially was this the case at the time of sugar- 

 making, and at these times I had often noticed 

 the latter variety nesting. The nature of the 

 woods on the Peel lands was no doubt the cause 

 of the absence of this species from that section, 

 hard wood being the principal timber here, while 

 as I now know the soft evergreen woods are the 

 peculiar ' haunts and homes of the Red-bellied 

 Nuthatch. When, however, I came to reside in 

 North Wallace, I was struck with the peculiar 

 appearance of the Nuthatches that I saw in the 

 evergreen woods there when compared with those 

 I had previously seen, and still occasionally ob- 

 served among the hard wood timber, but the idea 

 that they might be a different species did not yet 

 occur to me, and not until some years afterwards, 

 when I obtained lioss' Bii'da of Gimada did I be- 

 come aware that there existed two species of these 

 birds in the woods of Canada ; for my previous 

 text book, Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, gave me no 

 information on the subject. 



Having, however, obtained this information, I 

 identified the species at once, and knew much of 

 their distinguishing habits and peculiar haunts. 

 But previous to this, in the month of June of my 

 second year's residence in Wallace, as I was cut- 

 ting down some timber on the margin of a beaver- 

 meadow that intersected my farm, and where the 

 bush was composed chiefly of linden, black-ash 

 and several kinds of evergreens, my attention was 

 attracted by the action of a pair of Nuthatches 

 whose color and notes I observed differed from 

 those of another pair whose nesting place I had 

 disturbed in the sugar-bush on the other side of 

 the meadow earlier in the season. These birds 

 were continually going in and coming out of a 

 Woodpecker-like hole in the top of an old linden 

 stub about twenty feet from the ground, evidently 

 feeding young, and during the day the branches 

 of one of the trees that I was felling struck this 

 and brought it to the earth. Upon examination 



I found, to my regret, and the great distress of the 

 parent birds, that the cavity in the old tree had 

 contained the nest and three young of the Nut- 

 hatch, which were about a week old, but fatally 

 injured by the fall of their birthplace. The cavity 

 in which this nest was placed was like that of a 

 small Woodpecker's, and the nest itself, (like that 

 of a Blackbird) was composed chiefly of fine strips 

 of fibrous bark. I have long felt certain that it 

 belonged to and was a type of the nest of the Red- 

 bellied Nuthatch. Of late years I have rambled 

 through wet log strewn, brush-entangled, swampy 

 woods where these birds make their homes, but 

 no sight of their nesting places has since rewarded 

 my toil, though they are quite common here in 

 winter, and often in mid-summer their pleasant 

 notes fall on the listening ear, from the balsams, 

 or high up among the pine tree tops. Mr. Allen, 

 a gentleman of Toronto, writing in J'Ae Ontario 

 Farmer in 1869, on the subject of ornithology, re- 

 marked regarding this species : "The nest of this 

 Nuthatch is generally made at the bottom of (a 

 cavity in) some dead stump at no great height 

 from the ground. The eggs, four in number, are 

 small, white, with a deep blush, and sprinkled 

 with reddish dots." It seems, however, that the 

 general nesting habits of this species are as yet 

 but little known, and much interest and curiosity 

 must exist in the minds of ornithologists until 

 more is understood '^O'^^^ei^^ jua.lSBe.p.i-*;. 



