[Illustration: Figure 2. A Chickadee Family.]
A wood lot or a neglected old orchard bordering a wood is the place for the chickadee house. See Table I for measurements.
The Mountain and other chickadees share the natural nesting habits of the Black-cap. Since this group is composed of birds of practically uniform size, a house for any species should be the same as that described for the Black-cap.
However, chickadees are in general birds of the woods. Few or none come so near to being birds of “home grounds” as do the Black-caps. Houses for them, therefore, will be appropriate chiefly about woods homes or camps.
All that has been written of the chickadee and his housing problem applies also in a general way to the Nuthatch, except that a slightly larger entrance is needed for the latter bird (see measurements in Table I). The Nuthatch, somewhat more than his second cousins, the chickadees, is given to natural knot-holes in living trees. This propensity may well be humored by giving him a house of the hollowed-out trunk variety. If the trunk or branch so hollowed out has a knot which can be made of proper size to serve for the entrance, then that is to add the ultimate artistic finish, the final delicate “touch of nature.” See Plate II.
The western subspecies of the White-breasted Nuthatch occur chiefly in less settled or more restricted ranges, and they are apt to be less accustomed to, as well as less accessible for, bird houses.
The Red-breasted, Brown-headed, and other small nuthatches share the hollow-tree nesting habit common to the family. They prefer locations of the wilder kind, so that the usual bird house is not likely to entice them away from less sophisticated haunts. Yet it appears likely that any of the species might select an imitation of its natural nesting site. Build as for the White-breasted, except that the entrance should be but 1¼ inch in diameter.
The Tufted Titmouse is common in the south, where its distribution is also much more uniform than in the north. In some places it has pushed far toward our northern border, but there it is inclined to be of only local and irregular occurrence. In general it becomes more and more a bird of the wilder areas as it advances northward. Usually a wood or woodside location will be the one most likely to entice this species to a bird house. When and where the bird is found to linger about residences toward the nesting season, the houses may be placed much as for the bluebird or wren, but in a very quiet corner of the yard. Dimensions are given in Table I (page 16). See also Plates II and III.