1. Describe from your own observations the colors of the nuthatch above and below. 2. (a) What is the most noticeable character that distinguishes the nuthatch from the chickadee? (b) Does the nuthatch usually frequent the bole or the twigs of a tree? (c) Is there any difference in this respect between the habits of the nuthatch and the chickadee? 3. Does the nuthatch alight with its head down or up? 4. Does it travel down or up? Does it always go in a spiral? 5. What is its food? 6. Does it open nuts for the meat or the grubs within? 7. Does it use its tail as a brace in climbing trees as does the woodpecker? 8. Where does it build its nest? 9. What is the color of the eggs? 10. Why does it seem less common in summer than in winter? 11. How does it use its feet when resting on a tree trunk? 12. Has it any special development of the feet to help it in traveling on tree trunks? 13. Do you know the note of the nuthatch? Describe. 14. How would you spell its note? 15. How does the nuthatch help the farmer and fruit grower? LEAFLET XXVII. ABOUT CROWS.[36] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. [36] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 27, December, 1902. [Illustration] Thousands and thousands of crows fast asleep amongst the branches of a grove of pines! The trees themselves look dark and sombre against the snowy hillside, but when the assemblage of dusky birds has gathered there, the shadows thicken and the darkness settles like a pall. Soon all is hushed and silent. Would you not go miles to see such a sight? Yet maybe you have lived for years within easy walking distance of a great crow "dormitory" without even suspecting its existence. You may have watched the crows flying overhead every morning and then again every afternoon, without noticing that they came from the same direction each morning and returned at nightfall. This was just my experience until I began to care about crows and their ways. Now I know that there is a sleeping roost a mile or so up one of our wooded valleys and the oldest inhabitant tells me that he remembers seeing "more'n a million" crows up there in winters when he was a boy. Undoubtedly generation after generation of crows return to these sleeping places; certain localities have probably been so used for centuries. Although we have crows here all winter they may not be the same individuals that spent the summer here. The center of crow population in the eastern United States from November till February is the neighborhood of Chesapeake Bay. There the food supply is more abundant than where the ground is snow-covered in winter, and thither the crows migrate in innumerable armies. Dormitories from ten to thirty acres in extent and accommodating from ten thousand to three hundred thousand crows each have been found in that region.