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It was interesting, too, to trace the change in bird life as the altitude increased. At snow line the species had narrowed down to a few ravens, a Canada jay, a blue grouse or so, nuthatches, and brown creepers. I saw one fresh elk track, innumerable marten, and the pad of a very large grizzly. The ridge mounted steadily.
Bright-eyed deer mice peeped at her from under old logs, the chickadees, nuthatches, and jays started an investigating committee to learn if anything interesting to them was occurring. One gayly-dressed little sapsucker hammered a tree near by and scolded vigorously. "Right you are!" said Mary.
One autumn I found a number of these nuthatches associated with a flock of myrtle warblers on the most sociable terms in a pine woodland not far from Pensacola, Florida. Now they were up in the trees, now down on the ground. All the while they were chirping in their most genial tones. In a spring jaunt to southern Mississippi, I was fortunate enough to find a nest in a half-decayed snag.
The above are all birds of distinctive colouring and may be easily distinguished. Other small birds which are neither tits nor babblers go about in flocks, as, for example, nuthatches, but these other birds differ in shape and habits from babblers and tits, so that no one is likely to confound them with the smaller Corvidæ or Crateropodidæ. Molpastes leucogenys. The white-cheeked bulbul.
In the pine lands were plenty of brown-headed nuthatches, full, as always, of friendly gossip; two red-shouldered hawks, for whom life seemed to wear a more serious aspect; three Maryland yellow throats; a pair of bluebirds, rare enough now to be twice welcome; a black-and-white creeper, and a yellow redpoll warbler.
They seek their food largely about the leafy ends of the pine branches, resembling the Canadian nuthatches in this respect, so that it is only on rare occasions that one sees them creeping about the trunks or larger limbs.
The berries ripen in July and August, and at Naini Tal one rarely comes across a complete spike because the nuthatches pounce upon every berry the moment it is ripe. The king-crow is about the size of a bulbul, but he has a tail 6 or 7 inches long, which is gracefully forked. His whole plumage is glossy jet black.
These little fluffs are, in their way, as remarkable acrobats as are the nuthatches, and it is a marvel how the very thin legs, with their tiny sliver of bone and thread of tendon, can hold the body of the bird in almost any position, while the vainly hidden clusters of insect eggs are pried into.
But you may depend upon it he is not alone; he is only a part of the rim of a feathered colony dwelling near at hand, and consisting, very likely, of tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, juncos, tree sparrows, blue jays, one or two downy woodpeckers, a pair of cardinals, a flicker or two, and a cackling red-breasted woodpecker.
More interesting than any of the birds yet named, because more strictly characteristic of the place, as well as more strictly new to me, were the brown-headed nuthatches. But when I heard them twittering in the distance, as I did almost immediately, I had no suspicion of what they were.
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