202 
SITTA VARIA. 
of birds, from their supposed practice of breaking 1 nuts 
by repeated hatchings, or hammerings with their bills. 
Soft shelled nuts, such as chestnuts, chinkopins, and 
hazel nuts, they may, probably, be able to demolish, 
though I have never yet seen them so engaged ; but it 
must be rather in search of maggots, that sometimes 
breed there, than for the kernel. It is, however, said, 
that they lay up a large store of nuts for winter ; but, 
as I have never either found any of their magazines, or 
seen them collecting them, I am inclined to doubt the 
fact. From the great numbers I have opened at all 
seasons of the year, I have every reason to believe 
that ants, bugs, small seeds, insects, and their larvae, 
form their chief subsistence, such matters alone being 
uniformly found in their stomachs. Neither can I see 
what necessity they could have to circumambulate the 
trunks of trees with such indefatigable and restless 
diligence, while bushels of nuts lay scattered round 
their roots. As to the circumstance mentioned by Dr 
Plott, of the European nuthatch u putting its bill into 
a crack in the bough of a tree, and making such a 
violent sound, as if it was rending asunder,” this, if 
true, would be sufficient to distinguish it from the 
species we have been just describing, which possesses 
no such faculty. The female differs little from the male 
in colour, chiefly in the black being less deep on the 
head and wings. 
148 . SITTA VARIA , WILSON . — SITTA CANADENSIS , LINNAEUS. 
RED-BELLIED BLACK-CAPT NUTHATCH. 
WILSON, PLATE II. FIG. IV. 
This bird is much smaller than the last, measuring 
only four inches and a half in length, and eight inches 
in extent. In the form of its bill, tongue, nostrils, and 
in the colour of the back and tail-feathers, it exactly 
agrees with the former; the secondaries are not relieved 
with the deep black of the other species, and the legs, 
feet, and claws, are of a dusky greenish yellow ; the 
