NUT HA TCH— WREN. 
41 
Gilbert White describes how it opens hazel nuts to 
feed on the kernel ^ — " picks an irregular ragged hole with 
its bill ; but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut 
firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman, he fixes 
it, as it were, in a vice, in some cleft of a tree, or in some 
crevice ; when, standing over it, he perforates the stubborn 
shell. We have often placed nuts in the chink of a gate- 
post where nuthatches have been known to haunt, and 
have always found that those birds have readily pene- 
trated them. While at work they make a rapping noise 
that they may be heard at a considerable distance." 
When White says in the sixteenth letter to Pennant 
that it is this bird which " makes a clatter with his bill 
against a dead bough," he is doubtless confounding it 
with the lesser spotted woodpecker. 
When it occupies a nesting-box, it plasters down the 
lid with clay. 
Fam I L Y — Troglodytidce. 
Genus — Troglodytes. 
43. Troglodytes parvulus. Wren. 
Jenny Wren. Scutty. 
A common resident in all parts. 
In the month of November, 1904, one was busily 
building a nest at Laverstoke, and completed the outer 
shell before the inclement weather made it realize that it 
was too late in the year to complete the structure. 
* Letter Ivi. to Barrington. 
