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Updated: May 8, 2025
"I used to think so too," said Rap; "but now I see a difference. The body and bill of the Nuthatch is stouter, and not such a pretty shape, and his bill almost turns up. This Warbler is thinner, with a slender bill that curves a little down, like the Brown Creeper's. Then too, he has smaller and finer stripes than any Woodpecker." "What guild does he belong to?" asked Dodo.
I turned to reply, and found the inquiry was made by a grey parrot, who introduced himself as "Pretty Poll," and was ready to make friends to any extent. But my attention had been caught by seeing what looked like a nuthatch: only it was moping and ill, with eyes shut and feathers ruffled.
They were no doubt "aching" to frisk about among the snowy bushes, but would not indulge their playful mood under the eye of a human spectator. Presently one of them was seen carefully primping his feathers a function that I had not previously seen a nuthatch perform.
That is one of the most interesting features of the life of these birds. One writer who has observed them in their native haunts describes the rock nuthatch as "an expert clay mixer and molder."
Now and again, as they rustled some low tree, a pewee or a nuthatch would give a startled chirp. For an hour the noiseless journeying continued, and ever and anon the two gray, sinuous shapes would come for a moment into the view of the now well-risen moon.
In exactly three weeks from this time, and on the same hillside, I came upon another nuthatch similarly employed; but before this one had turned up a leaf to his mind, the sparrows became literally too many for him, and he took flight, to my no small disappointment. It would be unfair not to name others of my city guests, even though I have nothing in particular to record concerning them.
"This is the bird I saw the first day I went to the orchard with Olive; but why is he called a Nuthatch?" asked Nat. "Because, besides liking to eat insects and their grubs or their eggs, he is also very fond of some kinds of nuts, like beech and chestnuts," said the Doctor, "and he may be obliged to live entirely upon them in winter, when insects fail him.
No sound in nature more cheery and refreshing than the alternating calls of a little troop of this kind echoing through the glades of the woods on a still, sunny day in winter: the vivacious chatter of the chickadee, the slender, contented pipe of the gold-crest, and the emphatic, business-like hank of the nuthatch, as they drift leisurely along from tree to tree.
Comparatively few species remained all winter, the nuthatch, chickadee, owl, prairie chicken, quail, and a few stragglers from the main flocks of ducks, jays, hawks, and bluebirds. Only after the country was settled did either jays or bluebirds winter with us. The brave, frost-defying chickadees and nuthatches stayed all the year wholly independent of farms and man's food and affairs.
It was the voice of Yank-Yank the Nuthatch, and while it was far from being sweet there was in it something of good cheer and contentment. At once Peter hurried in the direction from which it came. On the trunk of an apple-tree he caught sight of a gray and black and white bird about the size of Downy the Woodpecker. The top of his head and upper part of his back were shining black.
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