NATURAL

HISTORY.

THE NUTHATCH.

THE Nuthatch (Sitta) is a genus of Tenuirostral birds with anisodactylick feet, of which the characters are: the bill of mean length, straight, circular in its section, depressed, conical toward the point, where the cutting edges are particularly sharp, and the texture very firm. The nostrils are placed at the base of the bill, rounded, and covered by bristly feathers, Four toes on each foot, the external one united to the middle of the base, and the hind one large and armed with a strong claw. There are twelve feathers in the tail, nearly square over at the ends, and with flexible shafts. The first quill of the wing very short, the second also shorter than the third, and the fourth is the longest in the wing. These birds are excellent climbers, and in this respect have no inconsiderable resemblance to the woodpeckers, and also to the tits, the former of which they resemble in their action upon the stems and large branches of trees, and the latter, in their action upon the small branches, from which they can hang suspended in a variety of positions; and thus search every part of a tree from the bottom of the trunk to the remotest bud, for insects or for nuts and seeds, all of which indiscriminately form part of their food according to the season.

As these birds have no song, they are kept in confinement only for the sake of their manners, even in those countries where the people are most partial to confine birds. Anecdotes are told of the difference between their manners when they are a sort of partially tamed in a free state, and when they are forcibly confined. "A lady," says Bechstein, " amused herself in the winter, and particularly when the snow was on the ground, with throwing, several times a day, different kinds of seeds on the terrace below the window, in order to feed the birds in the neighbourhood. These soon became accustomed to this distribution, and arrived in crowds when they heard the clapping of hands, which was the signal used to call them. She put some hempseed and cracked nuts even on the window-sill, and on a board, particularly for her favourites, the blue-tits. Two nuthatches came one day to have their share in this repast, and were so pleased, that they became quite familiar, and did not even go away in the following spring to get their natural food, and to build their nest in the wood. They settled themselves in the hollow of an old tree near the house; as soon as the two young ones which they reared here were able to fly, they brought them to the hospitable window where they were to be nourished, and soon after disappeared entirely. It was very amusing to see these two new visiters hang or climb on the wall or blinds, while their benefactress put their food on the board. These pretty creatures, as well as the tits, knew her so well, The typical species is the common nuthatch (Sitta that when she drove away the sparrows which came Europea.) It is about six inches in length, with a to steal what was not intended for them, they did not bill three quarters of an inch long, slender, but firm fly away also, but seemed to know that what was in its texture, and stiff by both mandibles being done was only to protect and defend them." The curved; the upper mandible is blackish-blue, the different habit of the bird in a state of involuntary lower one paler, and yellow at the base. The feet confinement is shown in the following account: “A are yellowish-gray, furnished with very strong claws. nuthatch, which had been accidentally winged by a The male bird is bluish-gray on the upper part, and sportsman, was kept in a small cage of plain oakblue on the forehead; the cheeks and throat are wood and wire. During a night and a day that his white, shown off by a black streak which extends confinement lasted, his tapping labour was incessant ; from the gape to the neck; the flanks and thighs and after occupying his prison for that short space, are brownish, and the breast and belly dull yellow. he left the wood-work pierced and worn like wormThe quills are blackish, and the tail-feathers, which eaten timber. His impatience at his situation was are twelve in number, are bluish-gray, except the excessive; his efforts to escape were unremitted, and lateral ones, which are black, and a white bar cross-displayed much intelligence and cunning. He was es the tail near the tip. As a British bird, the nut- fierce, fearlessly familiar, and voracious of the food hatch is confined to the south of England to nearly placed before him. At the close of the second day the same range as that occupied by the woodpecker; but it is a bird of different habits, not being migratory. It has not been observed in the extreme west of England. "We have never," says Montagu, "observed it far north, nor so far west as Cornwall. It chiefly affects wooded and enclosed situations, choosing the deserted habitation of a woodpecker in some tree for the place of nidification. This hole is first contracted by a plaster of clay, leaving only sufficient room for itself to pass in and out. The nest is then made of dead leaves, most times that of the oak, which are heaped together without much order. The eggs are six or seven in number, white, spotted with rust-colour, so exactly like those of the oxeye in size and markings, that it is impossible to distinguish any difference. If the barrier of plaster at the entrance is destroyed when they have eggs, it is speedily replaced; a peculiar instinct to prevent their nest being destroyed by the woodpecker and other birds of superiour size, which build in the same situation."

he sunk under the combined effects of his vexation, assiduity, and voracity. His hammering was peculiarly laborious, for he did not peck as other birds do, but grasping hold with his immense feet, he turned upon them as a pivot, and struck with the whole weight of his body, thus assuming the appearance, with his entire form, of the head of a hammer, or, as birds may be seen sometimes to do on mechanical clocks, made to strike the hour by swinging on a wheel."

The common nuthatch is the only one which is found in Europe, or any of the immediately adjacent parts of the world; but there are some others in America and in the eastern Asiatic islands. These are all like the common species of tree birds, and remarkable for their expertness in climbing; and their manners do not appear to differ greatly from those of the European nuthatch.

The Carolina nuthatch is not an uncommon species in North America, though some have regarded it as only a variety of the European one. It differs, how

the stables, around the house, mixing among the fowls, entering the barn, and examining the beams and rafters, and every place where he may pick up a subsistence."

streak of black passes through the eye, reaching to the shoulder; under this streak there is a line of white, and the chin is also of this latter colour. The wings and primaries are of dusky lead colour, and the other under parts are light russet. The top of the head of the female is not of so deep a black as the male, nor are the belly and breast of so intense a brown.

ever, in many respects, and some very zealous and talented students of animals, are of opinion that, how much soever European and American animals may resemble each other, they are still specifically different. We do not take upon us to decide this; but The red-bellied black-capped nuthatch is a smaller we shall quote Wilson's account of the differences species than the preceding. It measures only four between the two, and also his finely characteristick and a half inches in length in the body, and the account of the manners of the birds. "The head stretch of the wings is about eight inches. It corand back of the European species," says Wilson, responds exactly with the last in the form of the bill, "are of a uniform bluish-gray; the upper parts of the nostrils, and tongue, and also in the colour of the head, neck, and shoulders of ours are a deep.black back and tail feathers. The secondaries, however, glossed with green; the breast and belly of the are not varied with so deep a black as the other former are a dull orange, with streaks of chestnut; species. The legs, feet, and claws, are of a dingy those parts in the latter are pure white. The Euro-greenish yellow; the head is black on the upper pean has a line of black passing through the eye, part; a stripe of white encircles the frontlet; a halfway down the neck; the present species has nothing of the kind, but appears with the inner webs of the three shortest secondaries and primaries of a jet black; the latter tipped with white, and the vent and lower parts of the thighs of a rust colour. The European, therefore, and the present are evidently two distinct and different species. The bird builds its nest early in April, in the hole of a tree, in the hollow rail in a fence, and sometimes in the wooden These birds are migratory. They breed in the cornices under the eaves, and lays five eggs of a dull northern states, whence they pass to the southern white, spotted with brown at the greater end. The ones in October, and return in April. This and the male is extremely attentive to the female while sit-last-mentioned species are readily distinguished both ting, supplying her regularly with sustenance, stop-by the smallness of its size and the superiour swiftping frequently at the mouth of the hole, calling and ness of its motions. There is also a decided differoffering her what he has brought in the most endear-ence in the voices of the two species. The notes ing manner. Sometimes he seems to stop merely to inquire how she is, and to lighten the tedious moments with his soothing chatter.. He seldom rambles far from the spot; and when danger appears, regardless of his own safety, he flies instantly to alarm her. When both are feeding on the trunk of the same tree, or of adjoining ones, he is perpetually calling on her; and, from the momentary pause he makes, it is plain that he feels pleased to hear her reply.

"The white-breasted nuthatch is common almost everywhere in the woods of North America, and may be known at a distance by the notes quank, quank, frequently repeated, as he moves upward and down in spiral circles around the body and larger branches of the trees, probing behind the thin scaly bark of the white oak, and shelling off considerable pieces of it, in his search after spiders, ants, insects, and their larvæ. He rests and roosts with his head downward, and appears to possess a degree of curiosity not common in many birds, frequently descending very silently within a few feet of the root of the tree where you happen to stand, stooping head downward, stretching out his neck in a horizontal position, as if to reconnoitre your appearance; and, after several minutes' silent observation, wheeling round, he again mounts with fresh activity, piping his unisons as before. Strongly attached to his native forests he seldom forsakes them; and, amid the rigours of the severest winter weather, his note is still heard in the bleak leafless woods, and among the howling branches. Sometimes the rain, freezing as it falls, encloses every twig, and even the trunk of the tree, in a hard transparent coat or shell of ice. On these occasions I have heard his anxiety and dissatisfaction at being with difficulty able to make his way along the smooth surface; at these times generally abandoning the trees, gleaning about

of the present one are much sharper and quicker, and nearly an octave higher; but there is not much difference in the musick they produce, which is altogether a monotonous and untuneful stave. From the close resemblance they bear in point of colours and general habits, it is not unlikely that in their mode of constructing their nests, and in other parts of their economy, they may also make a similar approach to each other. Both these little birds are extremely useful, on account of their destroying vast quantities of those destructive insects and their larvæ which are so destructive to our fruit and forest-trees. Their principal haunts are those forests where pines are most abundant, especially in the winter season, as the seeds of the pine seem to be their favourite food.

It is highly probable that this migratory species has been called by different names in different parts of America, and different states of its plumage, though we still want correct information respecting the birds of those parts of the United States to which the keeneyed observation of Wilson did not extend. According to him, and within the limits of his observation, the pine forests are almost the exclusive haunts of the red-bellied and black-capped nuthatches; and many thousand acres of the deciduous forests may be traversed in winter without finding them, though they are abundant on the pine barrens as they are styled in that part of the country. It is indeed a point worth attending to in the natural history of pine forests, that the birds which take up their habitation almost exclusively there, are nearly as permanent all the year round in the locality as the greenness of the leaves. We find it so in the peculiar birds of the pine forests of Europe, however small they may be, and apparently ill able to endure the severe winters of the north; for the little crested wrens remain secure in the cover of the pines, when much larger

birds, which summer on the open grounds in the | ation relative to the geographical arrangement of the same regions, are driven southward in flocks. In forest birds of America, which are certainly more those pine forests, the red-bellied nuthatches are different from each other in different latitudes, than most frequently found in pairs, and not in flocks or the birds of the eastern continent. The division bepacks of their own species, though they associate tween North and South America, in a natural point readily with tits, small-spotted woodpeckers, and of view, is also greater than in the eastern continent; other birds which prefer similar localities, and are and as those tenants of the pine forests do not inhabit capable of similar activity. "The whole tribe" at very great elevations in their native localities, we (meaning the black-capped tit, the crested tit, the are not to suppose that they would gain those heights little spotted woodpecker, and these nuthatches,) in Mexico, on which alone pines are to be met with says Wilson, "proceed regularly from tree to tree in that country; while, as they avoid the forests of through the woods like a corps of pioneers; while, deciduous trees in the north, it is not likely that they in a calm day, the rattling of their bills and the rapid would follow the line of the coast of the Caribbean motions of their bodies, thrown, like as many tum- Sea. blers and rope-dancers into numberless positions, together with the peculiar chattering of each, are altogether very amusing; conveying the idea of hungry diligence, bustle and activity."

SYRIAN GOAT.

The brown-headed nuthatch is another American species, resembling the last-mentioned one in its THE wild goat is generally understood to be the manners, but differing in its locality, its colours, and being a little smaller. It is about four inches and a parent stock of all the domesticated varieties of goats, quarter long, and not eight inches in the stretch of much as these differ from each other. It is the the wings. The upper part of the head and neck paseng of the Persians, and the bezoar goat of some are light rusty-brown, except a white spot near the other eastern nations, a concretion called bezoar besetting on of the neck. The brown is mottled with ing sometimes found in its stomach. The horns of darker spots of the same, and there is a dusky streak this species are of a brownish ash colour, uniformly across the nostril to the eye. The chin and sides arched backward, but little divergent, and with a of the neck under the eyes are white; the wings slight recurvature toward the points. In their sec are dusky, with some of the secondary quills and tion, they are compressed laterally, with sharp an coverts slate-colour, which last is the colour of the gular edges to the front, and with a sort of furrow upper part of the two middle feathers of the tail, and which renders the edge sharper. These horns make of the tips of the other tail feathers; but there is a an angle with the frontal bone; and are marked with white bar across all the tail feathers near their tips, projecting tubercles, between which the surface is Some of the authorities describe and within this bar all across the two middle ones slightly striated. are black. The legs and feet are dull blue; the bill these tubercles as increasing with and indicating the is black, but blue toward the base of the lower man-age of the animal, but the point is not fully ascertained dible, and the irides are hazel. The female has the Indeed the animal is naturally so wild, and can make head darker brown, and the dark streak across the its escape so readily, in places where it is not so eye less conspicuous. The voice of this bird is also easily followed, that it cannot be subjected to very more shrill than that of the red-bellied one, and it is accurate examination. On the posterior edge the more social, being found in small flocks during the horns are rounded; in the male they are sometimes winter. It is an exceedingly active and vigilant lit-three feet in length; but they are usually smaller in tle bird, moving in all directions, and upon the most the females. The general colour of the male is slender twigs of the trees with great activity, so that grayish brown, with the dark line along the back and there are very few of the smaller birds of North a black tail: the front of the head is blackish, dark America, of which it is more difficult to obtain spe- est toward the nose, and reddish on the sides: the cimens. It is not understood to reach Canada, or the beard and long hair on the throat are reddish brown northern, or indeed the central states of the Ameri- The female is smaller than the male, and paler in can Union.

the colour.

The wild goat is chiefly found on the eastern Nuthatches are also mentioned as occurring in Jamaica and some others of the American islands, mountains-in those of Caucasus, Persia, and variand parts of continental America farther to the south; ous parts of Hindostan. That it exists in Europe is but the accounts of these are by no means precise, not very clearly made out. The ibex inhabits some and it is possible that they may be the same as some of the more lofty mountains, where there are abunof the North American species. There are specifick dance of domesticated goats; and as the domestick differences between all of these and the nuthatch of he-goats breed readily with the female ibexes, it is Europe; but as the habits and habitations are so very probable that those specimens, apparently internearly the same, it is probable that they may be sub-mediate between the common goat and the ibex, ject to the same changes of colour as we have noticed which have occasionally, though rarely been met in the European one; and, therefore, a new species with, are only hybrids between the wild and the tame must not be hastily founded on a single specimen. goat. Indeed both the wild goat and the ibex vary From the general habits of the birds, however, which so much in different countries, that it is not very easy are not migratory at all in some of the species, and to draw a clear and satisfactory line of distinction bnt very slightly so in others, it is scarcely to be sup-between them. Indeed direct crosses between the posed that they could pass even as stragglers from domestick goat and the ibex are not uncommon in the United States to the West India islands. We Switzerland; and the males of this cross are not are, however, very much in want of correct inform-only capable of breeding back to the pure blood of

the goat, but are much esteemed for that purpose, of being borne in mind, as it explains, in part, why as being larger in size than he-goats of the pure they are much more discursive in their habits than breed. Indeed it is probable that there is no muleism the partridges, and others of the family, or indeed in the matter; but that the ibex and the goat may breed freely, so as that the mixed progeny may among themselves be prolifick; for, of all the larger domestick animals, goats are probably the most free breeders.

The great distinction of the species is in the horns, and these are gradual. The ibex of the Alps has the horns remarkably square; that of Caucasus has them more rounded; while the Abyssinian variety makes an approach to the mountain wild goat, and that again to the domesticated ones.

THE QUAIL.

than most of the gallinidæ. They have the first quill of the wings as long as the others, and thus their wings being less rounded are better adapted for long flight.

The common quail has the upper part mottled with brown and gray, with a whitish or reddish streak along the middle of each feather. The top of the head is mottled with black and red, and marked with three longitudinal stripes of brownish white, the two lateral ones passing nearly over the eyes. The throat is black; the breast russet; the belly and thighs whitish; the bill black, and the feet fleshcolour. The length of the full grown male is between seven and a half and eight inches. The female has the breast white, spotted with black. Quails are subject to considerable varieties of colour, some being found much darker than the average, and others QUAILS are smaller in size than partridges, have the year resemble the female, after which they vary connearly all over yellowish white. The young of the bill slender, no red membrane over the eye, and no siderably in colour. Food and confinement have a spurs on the tarsi. In other respects, they bear a good deal of effect upon their colours; for when considerable resemblance to the partridges. The true they are kept under restraint and fed upon hempseed quails are all natives of the eastern continents, and all their colours merge in one uniform brown. They they are not found in the very cold latitudes. though a more minute race than the partridges, the than most of the gallinidæ, the extent of the wings Al- are much longer winged in proportion to their size quails are more active birds, more discursive and being about double the length of the body, while in prone to migration. They seem to admit of two di- the others it rarely exceeds one and a half. The visions, the quails, properly so called, which have common quail is found pretty generally throughout hind toes more or less produced; and those which continental Europe, ranging nearly as far to the north have no hind toe, and which, for that reason, Tem- as Lapland. It is also found in Asia, and is abunminck called Hemipodius, or half-footed. There is dant in the south of Siberia, but is not met with in that one structural character in the quails which is worthy country so far north as the shores of the Arctic sea.