Imagine my surprise to find the nest entirely empty, not even an egg having yet been deposited. The brave little lady had doubtless just entered the nest to lay her first egg, and was not going to be driven off without knowing the reason why. The tomtit is game every time. The entrance to most of the chickadee's nests is lateral, but I found one nest whose doorway was in the top of a fence post, so that the owners had to go down into it vertically. The hole was quite deep, and the birds would drop down into it as you have seen swifts dropping into a chimney, but whether they went down head first or tail first I could not learn, their movements were so quick. Another feature of this nest was that it had no roof, for the doorway was open to the sky, so that a cloudburst would have filled up their little nursery and drowned its inmates. THE NUTHATCH FAMILY* *This chapter is reprinted from that excellent bird magazine called "American Ornithology," published by Charles K. Reed, Worcester, Mass., and edited by his son, Chester A. Reed. The author is under obligation to these gentlemen for their courtesy in permitting him to reprint the article. BIRDS OF THE INVERTED POSITION There are a number of climbers in the bird realm, but none are quite so expert as the nuthatch, which may be regarded as a past-master in the art of clambering. The woodpeckers amble up the boles and branches of trees, and when they wish to descend, as they do occasionally for a short distance, they hitch down backward. The brown creepers ascend their vertical or oblique walls in the same way, but seldom, if ever, do anything else than clamber upward, never descending head downward after the fashion of the nuthatches. [Illustration: Nuthatch]