Alfred Newton

“ Without being very plentiful anywhere, it is generally distributed in suitable localities throughout its range—those localities being such as afford it a sufficient supply of food, consisting during the greater part of the year of insects, which it diligently seeks on the boles and larger limbs of old trees; but in autumn and winter it feeds on nuts, beech-mast, the stones of yew-berries and hard seeds. Being of a bold disposition, and trees favouring its mode of life often growing near houses, it will become on slight encouragement familiar with men ”

“ It generally makes its nest in a hollow branch, plastering up the opening with clay, leaving only a circular hole just large enough to afford entrance and exit; and the interior contains a bed of dry leaves or the filmy flakes of the inner bark of a fir or cedar, on which the eggs are laid. ”