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Updated: May 8, 2025
Then you hear "tap, tap," in the branches above. It is the little nuthatch hard at work scooping out his home in the bark. He sways his body with every stroke of his beak, and is so busy he takes no notice of you. The nuthatch is very fond of filberts, as his name implies.
They were not killed, at least not all of them, for they were still wiggling their legs and antennas; but they were evidently benumbed, or some of their backs were broken, and they were fastened so securely in the fissures that they could not escape. Does it not look as if the forehanded nuthatch was laying by a supply of ants for a coming time of hunger?
While I am not able to add any new species to science, I have made note of many pleasing incidents in the bird realm, and these, I venture to hope, may be of not a little general interest. There is the companionable white-breasted nuthatch which goes scudding up and down the tree trunks with as much ease and aplomb as a fly gliding over a window-pane. I have already told you something about him.
"'Yank! yank! says the White-breasted Nuthatch, as he runs up tree-trunks and comes down again head foremost, quite as a matter of course. "At first, or from a distance, you may mistake him for his cousin the Chickadee, who wears clothes of much the same color and is seen in the same places; or perhaps for the little Downy Woodpecker, who also hammers his insect food out of the tree bark.
In fact, this Nuthatch keeps his nest a secret from everybody but his wife and the Dryad of the tree in which he places it; he will not even trust the little branches with his precious home, but makes it in the wood of the tree itself. You say, Rap, that you found one of these nests won't you tell us about it?" "It was this way," said Rap.
There is a loud tapping noise as we pass an old fir-tree, but no bird is to be seen, so we go round to the other side and trace the noise to a small hole near which a quantity of congealed turpentine shows that the bark has been pierced by a woodpecker and the sap is oozing out. I rap outside the hole and in a minute the grey head of a nuthatch appears.
I watched awhile until the bird flew out, and, climbing to the spot, saw that the nest was squeezed in a sort of pocket between the loose bark and the tree itself. You see, like the Chickadee and Nuthatch, he loves trees so well that he tries to creep as close to their hearts as he possibly can." "Would you call this Creeper mostly a winter bird?" asked Dodo.
Another family of little folk came upon the maple after the orioles were gone, a nuthatch tribe. There were three or four of them exactly like the mother excepting a shorter tail, and they followed her like a flock of sheep, over and under branches, around the trunk, up or down or any way, never pausing more than an instant, not even when she plumped a morsel into a waiting mouth.
In the first place, before reaching the swamp, I found the third of my flat-wood novelties, the red-cockaded woodpecker. As had happened with the nuthatch and the sparrow, I heard him before seeing him: first some notes, which by themselves would hardly have suggested a woodpecker origin, and then a noise of hammering.
Detailed explanations of these can be found in Bulletin No. 1, "Attracting Birds About the Home," issued by the National Association of Audubon Societies. Suet wired to the limb of a tree on the lawn will give comfort and nourishment to many a Chickadee, Nuthatch and Downy Woodpecker. To make a bird sanctuary nesting sites and food are the first requirements.
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