110 EUROPEAN NUTHATCH. 



bigness of a sparrow, with a blue back, and a red- 

 dish breast, a wide mouth, and a long bill, which 

 it puts into a crack or splinter of a rotten bough 

 of a tree, and makes a noise as if it were rending 

 asunder with that violence, that the noise may be 

 heard at least 240 yards, some have ventured to 

 say a mile from the place." 



But the ingenious Colonel Montagu, in his Or- 

 nithological Dictionary, affirms that the noise 

 above described is in reality produced by Wood- 

 peckers, and not by the Nuthatch. " The singu- 

 lar noise, says this author, produced by some spe- 

 cies of Woodpeckers, by reiterated strokes of the 

 bill against the decayed limb of a tree, has been 

 erroneously ascribed to this bird.'* 



Colonel Montagu further informs us, that " the 

 Nuthatch chiefly affects wooded and inclosed situa- 

 tions, choosing the deserted habitation of a Wood- 

 pecker in some tree for the purpose of nidification. 

 This hole is first contracted by a plaster of clay, 

 leaving only sufficient room for itself to pass in and 

 out : the nest is made of dead leaves mostly of oak, 

 which are heaped together without much order. 

 The eggs are six or seven in number, white, spot- 

 ted with rust-colour, so exactly like those of the 

 Great Titmouse in size and markings,^ that it is 

 impossible to distinguish a difference. If the bar- 

 rier of plaster at the entrance is destroyed when 

 they have eggs, it is speedily replaced^ a peculiar 

 instinct, to prevent the nest being destroyed by 

 the Woodpecker and other birds of superior size 

 who build in the same situations. No persecutian 



