Description.—Size of English Sparrow, but with long, pointed bill, short tail, and short, strong feet. Adult male: Crown glossy blue-black; rest of upperparts blue-gray; outer tail-feathers blackish, tipped with black and white; wings with indistinct bars, and the tertials marked with black spots; sides of head and underparts white; under tail-coverts mottled with reddish brown. Female: Similar, but top of head grayish, not black. Length: 6 inches.
Range in Pennsylvania.—A common, permanent resident throughout.
Nest.—Of hair, mosses, feathers, and shredded bark, placed in a cavity at from 15 to 60 feet from the ground, usually in a forest tree. Eggs: 5 to 9, white, spotted evenly and thickly with reddish brown.
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
The Nuthatch’s habit of perching and hopping, upside down, on tree-trunks is unmistakable. Actually, he seems to prefer to eat his food thus, making it proper to say, perhaps, that he eats his caterpillars up. He may realize that the creepers, woodpeckers, and Black and White Warblers, working upward as they do, find the insects which can be seen from below or from the side, while he prefers to investigate the crannies that these other birds may pass by.
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.
He calls drrr, drrr, drrr in a nasal voice, as he busies himself with pounding at a bit of food. As he looks out from the trunk his neck is bent from his body at even more than a right angle, yet he does not seem to tire of these strained attitudes.
RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH
Sitta canadensis Linnæus
Description.—Smaller than English Sparrow. Male: Crown and wide line through eye to back of head, glossy black; line over eye white; rest of upperparts bluish gray, the outer tail-feathers blackish with white spots near their tips; underparts pale reddish buff, save on throat which is whitish. Female: Similar, but duller, the black of the head replaced with gray. Length: 4½ inches.
Range in Pennsylvania.—A migrant in late April and May, and more or less throughout the fall; occasional in winter, sometimes abundant. Nests rarely in northern counties and at high altitudes.
Nest.—Of mosses, hair, and such soft materials, in a cavity, often in a conifer. Eggs: 4 to 7, white, speckled with brown and gray.
The Red-breasted Nuthatch’s mouselike body seems strangely small as it moves about the great trunk of a high hemlock, far from the ground. As it disappears behind the tree, we hear its querulous, complaining nă, nă, nă, as it searches for insects. During migration it is often to be seen about the outer twigs where it sometimes hangs upside down, like a Chickadee. On the tree-trunks its actions are much the same as those of its larger relative, the White-breasted Nuthatch. (See illustration, [page 153].)