526 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
Nest. —In crevices of bark or holes in pines or other trees, 20 to 40 or more 
feet from the ground; lined with feathers, down, wool, and hair. Eggs: 6 to 7, 
white, covered with red spots, most thickly about the larger end. 
Food. —About 17 per cent seeds, mainly seeds of conifers, and 83 per cent of 
insects, including wasps, spittle-insects, weevils, caterpillars, and a few spiders. 
Nuthatches are eminently useful birds. They do not prey upon cultivated crops, 
eat but few useful insects, and probably are among our most efficient conservators 
of the forest and orchard (Beal). 
General Habits. —The plump, short-tailed Pygmy Nuthatches 
with small gratefully cheery notes proceed from pine to pine, with a 
droll bob-tailed flight, and when working about the tips of the pine 
branches the light patch on the back of the neck shows, marking 
them off still more plainly from the Rocky Mountain Nuthatches. 
The Pygmies are characteristic birds of the Transition Zone yellow 
pine belt, following it on steep hot slopes to the extreme upper limit 
of the zone, sometimes as high as 10,000 feet. They were seen on 
Pecos Baldy at both the upper and lower edges of the zone, from 8,000 
to 9,800 feet on cold slopes. On the east slope of the Taos Mountains 
they were common at all our yellow pine camps from Solitario Peak to 
the Taos Mountains. 
They were common all through the yellow pines at the head of the 
Mimbres late in May, 1906, where a pair was seen feeding young in a 
hole 20 feet from the ground in a dead pine. In Santa Clara Canyon 
we found them among the most abundant birds, and as late as August 
23, an apparently well feathered young one was seen putting its head 
out of the nest hole, in a dead cottonwood 30 to 40 feet from the ground. 
There was a series of holes up the trunk, small, and, like the one in 
use, rather irregular. In the Santa Fe country, Mr. Jensen has found 
eight nests in pine stumps, excavated by themselves. The birds seen 
by us in the yellow pines, August 21-26, seemed to be going about in 
families. 
From the mountains northeast of Silver City, April 18, 1919, Mr. 
Ligon wrote, “I watched two of these little fellows laboring at a nest 
hole eighteen feet up in a dead pine. One was inside, making the 
noise of a woodpecker. I watched the performance for about ten 
minutes, during which time it made three trips out to the entrance 
to fling the chips and dust to the wind with a quick shake of the bill. 
It came out apparently to rest and the other went quickly in, and after 
it had hammered a little, came up with its cuttings, flinging them away 
and quickly returning. On the 18th and 19th, it seemed that all the 
Pygmies, as if by general order, were working in nest holes.” On the 
20th, a nest was examined and found lined with feathers and other soft 
materials, but so far without eggs (MS). 
A pair that were watched by Mr. Gignoux, feeding young twenty 
