Nuthatch

“ June 9.—The red-breasted nuthatch (Sitta canadensis) at times acts like a real flycatcher. Just now one alighted on a tree-trunk near me, and while investigating the bark crevices, twice he flew out from the trunk, captured a flying insect dexterously in the air, and returned to his gleaning on the bole. ”

“ This neighborly winter bird visits the food-counter regularly and is very fond of suet. He has the habit of hiding food in the bark of trees. I once saw a Nuthatch thus hoarding sunflower seeds. At least a full hour he worked, hiding dozens of the little kernels. He was watched and followed by a pair of lazy Downy Woodpeckers who deliberately ate the seeds as fast as the Nuthatch could hide them. The Nuthatch, it appeared, has great faith in his ability to hide food where it cannot be found—so great a faith, in fact, that he did not properly guard his store. ”

“ The white-breasted nuthatch is our most common species east of the great plains, breeding from the Gulf States to the northern border of the United States and to New Brunswick. One peculiarity about him is that he breeds throughout his range, and therefore may be found as both a summer and winter resident in all suitable localities within these boundaries. ”

“ However, it was a pretty picture the nuthatch made, holding in her bill a large beetle with silvery wings, sometimes holding it straight out from the bark as she glanced around to see whether the coast was clear and at the same time calling her nasal "yank," so full of woodsy suggestion.
A trying experience for many birds comes at bedtime. They grow quite nervous as night begins to settle over the land, some of them chirping loudly to express their solicitude. As the darkness deepens, their sight becomes obscured, and they seem to realize that they are exposed to dangers unseen. ”

“ She instantly differentiated the moveless nuthatch from the knot on the trunk, the squatting grouse from the lichened stone, the wood-mouse from the curled brown leaf, the crouching wild-cat from the mottled branch. Consequently 97 the furtive folk gradually began to pay her the tribute of ignoring her, which meant that they trusted her to let them alone. They kept their reserve; but under her interested scrutiny the nuthatch would walk up the rough-barked pine trunk and pick insects out from under the grey scales ”

“ The Sittidæ are a well-defined family of little birds. When not occupied with domestic cares, they congregate in small flocks that run up and down the trunks and branches of trees in search of insects. The nuthatch most commonly seen in the hills is the white-tailed species (Sitta himalayensis) . The general hue of this bird is slaty blue. The forehead and a broad line running down the sides of the head and neck are black. There is a good deal of white in the tail, which is short in this and in all species of nuthatch. The under-parts are of a chestnut hue. ”

“ His bushy tail quivered, and using some strong squirrel-language, he dived back into his hole. He was hardly out of sight when the nuthatch was tapping again at his door. Once more the squirrel rushed out chattering and sputtering. Once more the nuthatch was not there. Then he tried chasing the bird around the limb, but there was nothing in that. The nuthatch could turn in half the time and space, and moreover did not have to be afraid of falling, for a drop of fifty feet to frozen ground is no joke even for a red squirrel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When ferreting for rabbits the writer has put both these birds out of the holes instead of their rightful owners. The nuthatch is yet another bird which upholds the same rule, and whose case is peculiarly interesting. It not only lays purely white eggs in holes in trees, but if the hole for ingress and egress is one whit too large it is plastered up by the industrious bird until it barely admits the body of the clever little architect. ”

“ Apparently they are wafted about the garden; they fly with no more effort than a dainty lifting of the wings, as if to catch the breeze, that seems to lift them as it might a bunch of thistledown. They go through a great variety of charming posturings as they hunt for their food upon the blossoms and tender fresh twigs, now creeping like a nuthatch along the bark and peering into the crevices, now gracefully swaying and balancing like a goldfinch upon a slender, pendent stem. One little sprite pauses in its hunt for the insects to raise its pretty head and trill a short and wiry song. ”

“ Round about Chester the bird is not uncommon, and until recently a pair or two occupied trees in Oulton Park, but within a few miles of Manchester it is casual. The return of the nuthatch to its long-forsaken home is a good sign; it pleased me more than the sight of a few swallows, flying with the sand martins, or of a large flock of fieldfares, halting for refreshment on their northward trail, though the fieldfare has been curiously rare this winter. ”

“ But what, it may be asked, can a bird little larger than a Sparrow find to do with a filbert, or even a hazel-nut? Here we have a fresh distinctive feature in the biography of the Nuthatch. The bird carries off its prey in its beak, and when in want of a meal wedges the nut in the crevice of some rough-barked tree, such as an oak, an elm, or a walnut. ”

“ It was with difficulty that the food was disentangled from the silk, and I found on examination that much of it bad been so crushed, that it was impossible to determine whether the web contained eggs or young. While thus engaged, I saw a White-breasted Nuthatch, with something in its beak, alight on the trunk of a wild cherry tree. While running about over the bark, the bird dropped what proved to be an acorn, but immediately flew down and picked it from the long grass, and returned to the tree. ”

“ BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH
729. Sitta pusilla. 41⁄4 inches
Crown brownish with a white patch on the nape.
These diminutive Nuthatches are found in the southern states. Their general habits do not appear to differ from those of other members of the family. They nest very early, commencing to excavate their holes in January and having complete sets of eggs as early as the middle of February.
They usually are found in small flocks and at night they will often be seen flying to the top of a pine where they sleep, all huddled together. ”

“ Not even the woodpecker has a better carpenter’s chisel.
“The nuthatch is about as large as a sparrow. All the upper part of its plumage is of a bluish ash color, the throat and cheeks are white, and the breast and stomach red. A black stripe, starting from the corner of the beak, passes over the eye and down the side of the neck. This bird nests in a hole in a tree trunk and it knows how, if need be, to make the opening of the nest smaller with a little moistened clay. Its eggs, from five to seven in number, are laid on moss or wood-dust and are of a dingy white dotted with red. ”

“ I do not know if naturalists have remarked that the nuthatch has a very limited range of vision. Zöe could see nothing beyond twelve or fourteen inches; the most tempting mealworm might lie on the floor of the cage unnoticed if she happened to be on her tree-stem ”

“ At twilight I had lingered at the woodside, also in other likely places, and the goatsucker had failed to appear, gliding and zig-zagging hither and thither on his dusky-mottled noiseless wings, and now this still heavier disappointment was mine. I could not find the wryneck. Those quiet grassy orchards, shut in by straggling hedges, should have had him as a favoured summer guest. Creeper and nuthatch, and starling and gem-like blue tit, found holes enough in the old trunks to breed in. ”

“ Nuthatch is the acknowledged acrobat of the woods—not that he acts for display; it is all business with him. A tree is a complete gymnasium in itself, and the bird is master of it all. In all positions, any side up, this bird is there, fearless, confident; in fact, he rather prefers traveling head downward, especially [289] on the main trunk route. He pries under bark-scales and lichens, peers into crevices and explores cavities in his search for tiny insects, larvæ, and insects’ eggs, especially the latter. ”

“ In the economy of Nature one finds marvelous adaptations and harmonies. Mr. Francis H. Allen, in his delightful sketch written for the National Association of Audubon Societies, speaks of the nuthatch as “filling a gap in nature” by approaching his prey from an angle not possible to woodpeckers and creepers. Mr. Allen says: “He would not have adopted so unusual a method of feeding if it had not stood him in good stead. I suspect that by approaching his prey from above he detects insects and insect-eggs in the crevices of the bark which would be hidden from another point of view. ”

“ Sitta canadensis. Red-breasted Nuthatch.—About Camp 1, we several times heard Nuthatch voices but were unable [Pg 263] to trace them to their origin and we cannot be certain of the species. Young took one at Camp 11 on the Little Sandhill Creek, August 21, feeding on woolly aphides on the cottonwoods. Neither Farley or Horsbrough report this species in the breeding season though Fleming has Red Deer specimens taken June 10. ”

“ We have another much smaller bird in the village which can hold large objects between its mandibles—objects almost as large, and sometimes more bulky, than the egg of the Cuckoo. This is the Nuthatch, which will carry away from a window any number of hard dessert nuts, and store them up in all sorts of holes and corners, where they are sometimes found still unbroken. These plump and neat little birds, whose bills and heads and necks seem all of a piece, while their bodies and tails are not of much account, have been for years accustomed to come for their dinners to my neighbour’s windows. ”

“ In addition to beetles, moths, caterpillars, ants, and wasps, the nuthatch eats seeds, waste grain, and nuts such as acorns, beechnuts, and chestnuts. [43] His habit of wedging nuts into some crevice that will hold them securely, and then using his strong bill as a hatchet to “hatch” open the nuts is well-known. From that habit he derives his name, which Mr. Forbush says originated probably from nuthack or nuthacker. The bird does much good, and no harm that is known. ”

“ At all other times both kinglets keep up an incessant fluttering and twinkling among the twigs and leaves at the ends of the branches, jerking their tiny bodies from twig to twig in the shrubbery, hanging head downward, like a nuthatch, and most industriously feeding every second upon the tiny insects and larvae hidden beneath the bark and leaves. They seem to be the feathered expression of perpetual motion. And how dainty and charming these tiny sprites are! They are not at all shy ”

“ A Hoarding Bird.—A writer in Hardwicke has discovered in the nuthatch, or nutpecker, the habit of laying up in its harvest-season a store of nuts for a winter provision, a characteristic which has been hitherto observed, as the writer remarks, in no other birds save tame individuals of the family Corvidæ. ”

“ This parapet, constructed either to keep out bulky intruders or to keep in the young birds, if injured or destroyed will be found restored after a short lapse of time; and so devoted a mother is the hen bird that she will suffer herself to be taken rather than desert her brood. I have rarely noticed a Nuthatch on the ground during winter, but in spring and summer it adds to its diet terrestrial insects and worms and is said also to be partial to red currants—not a singular taste. ”

“ The Velvet-fronted Blue Nuthatch (Sitta frontalis) goes about in little flocks and is such a confiding little bird that if one is killed the rest of the flock will wait near till they are killed too. Therefore if a man were to eat one, one death in his household would be followed by a series of deaths. A solitary old man or woman can, of course, eat this bird with impunity. ”

“ All the accounts I have seen in books say the brown-headed nuthatch builds no nest, but lays her eggs in 16 the bottom of a hollow in the tree on the decayed wood. Now, I have never found one that did not make an attempt to build a nest. I have found several, ranging from two to forty feet from the ground, and in every case a nest was built, composed of fibrous roots, pieces of hanging moss, hair and feathers mixed together. ”

“ The eggs of this Nuthatch measure .80 by .62 of an inch. Their ground-color is white, but when the egg is fresh it has a beautiful roseate tinge, and generally receives an apparently reddish hue from the very general distribution of the spots and blotches of rusty-brown and purplish with which the eggs are so closely covered. These markings vary greatly in size, from fine dots to well-marked blotches. Their color is usually a reddish-brown; occasionally the markings are largely intermixed with purple. ”

“ They always go in little flocks, or companies, probably, in general, of more than one brood, and frequently are accompanied with the white-breasted nuthatch, or tomtit, as he is sometimes called in the country, and also with the small woodpecker, and sometimes, in spring and fall, with the golden-crested wren,—a beautiful and very small bird, with a bright flame-colored spot on the crown of his head,—and sometimes by the brown creeper. Their food consists, in a great part, of insects, though at some times in the year, partly of seeds and of various kinds of oily substances. ”