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The nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, and brown creepers find larvae, grubs, borers, and insects' eggs in the crannies of the bark and other nooks and niches; the goldfinches find something to their taste in the buds of the trees and also make many a meal of thistle and sunflower seeds; the juncos and tree sparrows, forming a joint stock company in winter, rifle all kinds of weeds of their seedy treasures; the blue jays lunch on acorns and berries when they cannot find enough juicy grubs to satisfy their appetites, and so on through the whole list.
Soon the sun was shining from an unmarred sky, and the snow-clad earth smiled back in shimmering recognition. It was a day for worship in God's first sanctuary. Yet it was a day for watching the gambols of the birds, and such occupation by no means interfered with the spirit of worship. In the depths of the woods the white-breasted nuthatches were holding a friendly interview.
But the Nuthatches and Kinglets were in such a state of bustle that at length the Chickadees did catch a little of the excitement, and left off play for a while to question their friends; and they were not pleased with what they learned, for it seemed that all of them were to make a journey that would last many days, and the little Kinglets were actually going as far as the Gulf of Mexico.
People used to call him 'Nuthack' or 'Nuthacker'; these words mean exactly the same thing, but we always say 'Nuthatch' now." "Then there are Nuthatches up in the hickory woods," said Rap, "but I never knew their real name until now; for the miller calls them 'white-bellied creepers. Last summer I found one of their nests, when I wasn't looking for it either." "Do they build here?" asked Olive.
Sometimes the chickadees and nuthatches, hunting through the winter woods, make a discovery that brings every bird within hearing to the spot, they spy out the screech owl hiding in the thick of a hemlock-tree. What an event it is in the day's experience! It sets the whole clan agog.
Only a mere fraction of tree surface is searched over at any one time. In large forests probably only a mere fraction of the trees are visited at all. One cold day in midwinter, when I was walking through the snowless woods, I saw chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers upon the ground, and upon roots and fallen branches.
While I was walking in the December woods, one day, my attention was attracted by a great hue and cry among these birds. I found them in and about a hemlock-tree, eight or ten chickadees and four or five red-bellied nuthatches. Such a chiding chorus of tiny voices I had not heard for a long time. The tone was not that of alarm so much as it was that of trouble and displeasure.
They commonly assembled in the middle of the marsh upon the snow or ice, where they stood for a little, bobbing their heads in mutual conference, and then flew off over the house and over the orchard, calling as they flew. Throughout December, and indeed throughout the winter, brown creepers and red-bellied nuthatches were surprisingly abundant. Every pine wood seemed to have its colony of them.
I found these pretty nuthatches in the pine woods on Mackinac Island in midsummer, and have good reason to believe that they breed there.
The hardy nuthatches were threading the open furrows of the barks in their usual industrious manner and uttering their quaint notes, giving no evidence of distress.
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