The nest of this quaint little bird is nearly always placed in a hole in a tree-trunk. It is made of roots, twigs, fragments of bark, and grass, and is lined with wool and feathers. From six to nine eggs are laid, which are white in color, prettily spotted with yellowish red. [Illustration: AMERICAN INSECT-EATING SONG-BIRDS 1. Chimney Swift. 2. Barn Swallow. 3. Wood Thrush. 4. Red-eyed Vireo. 5. Chestnut-sided Warbler. 6. Maryland Yellow-throat. 7. Redstart. 8. Phoebe Pewee. 9. Black-throated Green Warbler. 10. King-bird. 11. Cedar Waxwing. 12. Oven-bird. 13. Bluebird. All adult males.] THE NUTHATCH This is another bird that one may often see running about on the trunk of a tree. It is shaped rather like a wren, but is a little bigger than a sparrow, and has a bluish-gray head and back, a white throat and breast. It has the curious habit of keeping head downward almost continuously as it works. The European nuthatch is very fond of nuts, which it cracks in a most curious way. First of all, it wedges a nut firmly in some crevice in the bark of a tree. Then, taking up its stand on the trunk just above, it deals blow after blow on the nut with its stout little beak, swinging itself up into the air every time that it does so and giving a flap with its wings, so as to add force to its stroke. It turns itself into a kind of live pickax, and after a very few blows the nutshell is split open, and the clever little bird is able to get at the kernel; but our American nuthatch seems to have forgotten this habit, if it ever had it, and lives almost wholly on insects. The nuthatch makes its nest in a hole in a tree, and it is generally composed of small pieces of soft bark, lined with dry leaves. When the mother bird is sitting on her eggs, which are white in color, spotted with pink, she will peck most savagely at any enemy which may try to enter, hissing as she does so, just like a snake. TITMICE These birds can be seen almost everywhere, and very pretty and attractive little birds they are as they run about on the trunks and branches of trees, not seeming to mind in the least whether they are perching on a bough, or hanging upside down underneath it. And all the while they are searching every little chink and cranny in order to see whether any small insects are hiding within it. It is a very good plan in winter to take a marrow-bone, or a little network bag with a lump of suet in it, and hang it from the branch of a tree for the titmice. Day after day the little birds will visit it, clinging to it in all sorts of positions, and pecking vigorously away at the suspended dainty. And they will like a cocoanut which has been cut in half almost as well.