NATURE) STUDY. 
150 
son Sitta carolinensis is called nuthatch. On the apple- 
tree (in the heart of the town) she had nailed a cigar-box 
and filled it with uncracked peanuts. These have stayed 
there in almost undiminished numbers for three months. 
February 4th there was so heavy a storm that the peanuts 
were covered by a mountain of snow six inches high in the 
center. February 6th, during a very cold northwest wind, 
a female nuthatch came to the cigar-box, stood on the 
edge, perching, as best she could (you never see a nut¬ 
hatch perch on a small twig or branch), and, burying her 
head in the snow she burrowed and shoveled away until she 
reached a nut. This she pierced with her bill, and some¬ 
how managed to fly away with it to a tree. Here she 
wedged it between a bit of bark and the trunk, and shelled 
it. She then split it in half, flew with one section to an¬ 
other tree, crammed it between crevices in the bark, and 
had a feast to her liking, while she hung on the sheltered 
side of the elm, safe from the strong wind. I called the 
bird a female because the back of the head and between 
the wings the color was decidedly more gray than bluish- 
gray. Nuthatches were originally called “nut-hackers.” 
(I write this for the benefit of any who may be in a state 
similar to the writer’s earlier one of ignorance.) 
What mistakes they make—the beginners ! A club 
woman recently wrote and read to her club that “the cow- 
bird never laid any eggs of her own, but relied upon the 
eggs of other birds to reproduce her own kind.” This is 
vouched for as being a bona fide story, and it has this vir¬ 
tue, that it is a consolation when one is considering all she 
does noi know about birds. 
A nuthatch has been reported to the writer as having 
performed an acrobatic feat of no mean agility this winter. 
The narrator had hung a lump of suet by one long string 
to a tree in his.yard. He one day had this amusing spec¬ 
tacle presented to him: The nuthatch, at the top of the 
