BIRDS OF PENNSYLVANIA . 
317 
Sitta pusilla Lath. 
Brown-headed Nuthatch. 
Description. 
Smallest of all our species. 
Bill rather stout; maxilla and terminal third of mandible black, rest of lower man¬ 
dible yellowish (dried skins). Length about 4 inches or alittle more ; extentabout 
8. Top of head and nape brown ; lores and streak back of e ve similar to pileum but 
darker; a distinct white spot on hind neck; edge of wing and chin white ; under 
part generally grayish, or pale-brownish white. Tail is less varied with white than 
either of two last described species. 
Habitat .—“South Atlantic and Gulf States, north, regularly, to lower Maryland 
and Virginia (lower Potomac, shores of Chesapeake Bay, etc.), casually to Ohio, 
Michigan, Missouri (Pennsylvania?), etc ."—Ridgway. 
The Brown-lieacled Nuthatch, a southern bird, and one which is much 
smaller than either of the two previously mentioned species, I have 
never observed in Pennsylvania, where it is recorded as occurring- only 
as a casual or accidental visitor. Dr. Turnbull (Birds of East Pennsyl¬ 
vania) gives it as a rare straggler in summer to the southern counties. 
The late C. D. Wood, had a specimen in his collection which he stated 
had been captured near Philadelphia, in the autumn (about 1885). 
The stomach contents of twenty-three of these birds (adults and young) 
captured in Florida, during the winter and spring months, and examined 
by the writer consisted exclusively of insects, chiefly beetles, larvae and 
ants. 
Subfamily PARING. Titmice. 
THE TITMICE. 
About a dozen species and several subspecies of this group are recorded as belonging 
to the fauna of North America; of these three species only are found in Pennsylvania. 
Two—the Tufted Titmouse and Chickadee are common, but the Carolina Chickadee 
appears to have been observed, except as a straggler, only in the southeastern part of 
Pennsylvania (Chester, Delaware, Lancaster and Philadelphia counties). The nests, 
composed of feathers, hair, cotton, grasses and other soft and warm materials, are 
built in holes of trees or stumps ; the eggs, five to eight in number, are white, spotted 
or speckled’ with reddish-brown. Titmice sometimes, like woodpeckers, excavate 
holes in rotten wood, in which they rear their young, but usually I think these birds 
endeavor to make use of old holes and commonly only dig new holes when they are 
unable to find old ones which will be suitable for a nesting place. The writer has 
examined eleven nests of Titmice, and but two of these were built in what appeared 
to be new excavations, and both of these were in decaying willow stumps, along a 
swamp in the edge of a woods. In summer Titmice are usually found in woods and 
thickets, but in winter these active, vociferous and restless birds frequently come 
singly or in small fiocks about our yards and gardens. The Chickadee or “Tom-tit,” 
by which latter name he is known to many, is much more abundant than either of 
the other species, and in the autumn and winter he is one of the frequent visitors to 
orchards and shrubbery about houses. During the late spring, summer and early 
fall Titmice subsist mainly on an insect diet, consisting principally of different 
larvae, small beetles, plant-lice, spiders, ants, etc. In winter they devour various 
