tTbe Selbovne Society’s ^H^agasine 
No. 47. NOVEMBER, 1893. Vol. IV. 
NOTES ON A NUTHATCH. 
HIS garden is full of a great number and variety of birds, 
all more or less proteges of mine in the winter time ; but 
I have never seen more than one pair of nuthatches, 
and that only within the last twelvemonths. The first 
time I became aware of the presence of a nuthatch in the garden 
was last summer. It happened in this wise. 
Last year, when the strawberries were ripe, a squirrel made 
his appearance. Biding his time in a fir tree till he thought he 
was not observed, he used to descend into the strawberry bed, 
take a strawberry, and return again to his favourite tree to enjoy 
it ; this he would do several times in succession, whilst I watched 
him unobserved. Thinking he must be very hungry to devour 
fruit in this eager way, I took compassion on him, and used to 
place some nuts daily at the foot of his own particular tree. 
These he soon found out, and took one by one up to the top of 
the fir tree to eat, in the same manner as he had taken the straw- 
berries. He came to the garden every day for the nuts (not 
forgetting the strawberries as well) throughout the summer and 
autumn, but late in the latter season he disappeared, finding, 
doubtless, that there were then more nuts to be got in the woods. 
I continued, however, to put some nuts for him in the old place 
in case of his re-appearance, and though I never saw anything of 
the squirrel, the nuts disappeared each day, though there was no 
sign of his having been there, as there was not a single nutshell 
to be seen anywhere beneath the tree. 
At first I thought it must be a mouse who took the nuts, but 
at last one day the mystery was cleared up, for I suddenly ob- 
served a nuthatch fly up to the roof of the house with a nut in his 
beak. This he struck deliberately, several times in succession, 
against the masonry of the chimney, until he had no doubt suf- 
