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Updated: May 8, 2025
Hairy Woodpecker, 1; Downy Woodpecker, 7; Blue Jay, 8; Goldfinch, 2; Pine Siskin, 1; Tree Sparrow, 75; Slate-coloured Junco, 20; Cardinal, 2; White-breasted Nuthatch, 3; Chickadee, 26. Total, 10 species, 145 individuals. Denver, Colo. Dec. 25; 2.20 to 4 P. M. Partly cloudy; ground with some snow; wind west, strong; temperature 45 degrees to 55 degrees.
You would stop Shakespeare himself, if he were reciting a new sonnet to you, and bid him be quiet and look half-way up the elm where the nuthatch was beating away up and down, like a blacksmith at a nut or something in a knob of the tree. St Paul might be reading out to you the first draft of his Epistle to the Romans; you would quite unscrupulously interrupt him with a "Hush, man!
Then there are little worms that bore in just under the bark, and there are other creatures who sleep the winter away in little cracks in the bark. Oh, there is plenty for me to do in the winter. I am one of the policemen of the trees. Downy and Hairy the Woodpeckers, Seep-Seep the Brown Creeper and Yank-Yank the Nuthatch are others.
"Without a touch of brilliant color, the nuthatch is a beautiful bird on account of the pleasing softness and harmonious disposition of his tints; and, in like manner, without being a songster in the strict sense of the word, his voice is so clear and far-reaching and of so pleasing a quality, that it often gives more life and spirit to the woods and orchards and avenues he frequents than that of many true melodists.
Now what special difficulty would there be in natural selection preserving all the slight individual variations in the shape of the beak, which were better and better adapted to break open the seeds, until a beak was formed, as well constructed for this purpose as that of the nuthatch, at the same time that habit, or compulsion, or spontaneous variations of taste, led the bird to become more and more of a seed-eater?
Odd indeed are some of nature's evolutions, I had almost said caprices, for the rock nuthatch is just as much at home and apparently just as happy on its bleak precipices as is our merry whitebreast in his umbrageous home in the oak or maple forest. But what kind of nests do the rock nuthatches construct on their limestone walls?
The rock nuthatch is as expert a mixer of mortar as the well-known cliff swallows of our own country, and his adobe dwellings bear a close resemblance to theirs.
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.
A little bird that comes very near disputing the palm with the nuthatch as a sylvan coaster is the creeping warbler, which flits about over the tree boles in all kinds of attitudes, even with his dainty head pointed toward the earth. No fear in his little striped breast of the blood rushing to his brain.
If, however, an oriole was found by one of the old mocking-birds perched on the edge of the nest, he was driven away with a piece of mocking-bird mind on the subject of meddlers. Likewise they frequently paid visits to a nuthatch colony at the top of a tall pine-tree. Whether more aggressive among these smaller birds, or not, could not be seen.
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