need here to note the statement (since it found a place in
former editions of this work, and has been repeated by
compilers who have thence drawn their sole information)
that it nested in holes of trees, which like Woodpeckers
it excavated or enlarged for its purpose. That such a site
may yet be found cannot be denied, hut hitherto all the
Nutcrackers’ nests, which the zeal and care of ornithological
explorers (now not a few in number) have discovered, were
placed on the houghs of trees, at a height of about twenty
feet from the ground. It is possible that in some cases
the birds themselves had not built the whole fabric, but
had availed themselves of an older structure which they
had repaired and adapted to their own use. It is now
admitted that Thienemann was the first to obtain a nest
of this species, but the year in which he did so is not
known, and that the late Abbé Caire in 1846 was the first
to procure its eggs, though no record of either fact was
published till long after. Even then so great was the
prevalent uncertainty that grave doubts continued to be
expressed by the best-informed ornithologists.* The chief
reason why the nest and eggs of the Nutcracker remained
so long unknown seems to be that, noisy and obtrusive as
it is for a great part of the year, it becomes, like the Jay,
silent and beyond measure shy as the pairing-season
approaches. In very early spring, ere the snow has fallen
from the trees or melted on the ground, and the forests it
frequents are yet difficult of access, it begins to prepare its
nest, and its full complement of eggs is laid, and the young
are often hatched, amid all the rigours of winter. In
Switzerland four nests have been found on the same 10th
* As regards our countrymen these doubts only began to be dispelled in 1862,
when a Nutcracker’s nest and fledgeling, obtained in Bornholm by HH. Erichsen,
Fischer and Theobald, of Copenhagen, were exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological
Society (P. Z. S. 1862, p. 206). In the following year the gentlemen
just named found in the same wood, and the produce it would seem of the same
parents, a nest with newly-hatched young, and in 1864, three nests with eggs,
one set of which they with the greatest liberality transmitted, as they had the
first nest and one of its tenants, to the Editor (op. cit. 1867, p. 162). In 1862
also the discovery of Herr Schiitt, of which more presently, was made known to
English readers (Ibis, 1862, p. 365).
of March, each with four eggs, and in Bornholm the young
have been taken on 9th April. Yet one instance is on record
of eggs being unhatched on the 17th of that month. Locality
seems hardly to affect the time of breeding, and the period
of incubation, which is said to be performed by the hen-
bird only, has been surmised to be from seventeen to
nineteen days.
Many nests of the Nutcracker have now been described,
but there seems to be no essential difference in their construction.
One in the Editor’s possession is five or six
inches in thickness with an outside diameter of about a
foot and six inches across, the interior. It is composed
outwardly of sticks and twigs of larch, spruce and birch,
all, as the swollen state of their buds shews, freshly
plucked, as is also the grass with, which it is thickly lined.
A few bits of moss and lichen are present, but they seem
rather to have adhered to the other materials than to have
been intentionally added. In some nests a considerable
quantity of earth or rotten wood underlies the lining, which
occasionally consists of hair-like lichen. The eggs, generally
four but not unfrequently five in number, are white, slightly
tinged with bluish-green, sometimes nearly spotless but
usually sparsely freckled with pale olive- or ash-colour,
though occasionally these markings are numerous and
pretty evenly distributed over the whole surface. In size
they measure from 1*38 to l -26 by from '97 to *93 in.*
Taking in order the European countries in which the
Nutcracker is known to be indigenous we may begin with
Norway, though here details are meagre. Herr Collett says
(Norges Fugle, p. 28), on the authority of Pastor Schubeler
that it. bred several times between 1840 and 1848 near
Porsgrund, and according to Dr. Printz that a nest was
found in 1854 at Land on the Rands Fjord—rbut no
* The caution of the late Mr. Hewitson in refusing to figure supposed eggs of
this bird has been amply justified by the fact that those offered to him, as
shewn by the description given of them, clearly belonged to some other species.
The first representation of a true Nutcracker’s egg seems to be that by Baedeker
(Journ. fur Orn. 1856, Taf. i. fig. 1), but it is not good. The only trustworthy
figure published in England is Mr. Smit’s (P. Z. S. 1867, pi. xv. fig. 2).
VOL. H x x
flkr *4-