The Brown-headed Nuthatch is abundant from Louisiana and Florida to the southern part of Maryland. It also strays, at times, farther north, for it has been taken in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. In the pine woods of the Southern States it passes a happy existence, always chattering in bird language even when its head is downward. “Each one chatters away without paying the slightest attention to what his companions are saying.” Mr. Chapman says: “There is such a lack of sentiment in the nuthatch’s character, he seems so matter-of-fact in all his ways, that it is difficult to imagine him indulging in anything like a song.” Though these words have reference to another species, they apply equally well to the Brown-headed form, whose only note seems to be a monotonous and oft-repeated utterance of a single syllable.
For its nest it selects a suitable hole in the trunk of a tree, or in a stump, that is usually not far from the ground. This it lines with grasses, fine, soft fibers and feathers. Here are laid about six creamy white eggs that are spotted with a brownish color. The parents are attentive to their young and seldom associate with others of their kind till these family cares are finished. Then they become more sociable and are found in companionship not only with other Brown-heads but also with woodpeckers, warblers and chickadees.
BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH.
(Sitta pusilla.)
Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.
MY RED-HEADED NEIGHBORS.
I.
For five years, with each returning spring, a pair of red-headed woodpeckers has come, to make their nest and rear their brood of young near my cabin door. It was on a cold drizzly day the last of April, when I first observed my new neighbor. He was closely watching me as he dodged about the trunk of a dead tree standing in the yard.
Unmindful of the falling rain, he put in the day pecking and pounding away, seemingly in search of food, occasionally flying away or hitching around the tree as some one passed, returning to his quest as soon as the coast was clear.
Not until the next morning on awaking and hearing my neighbor industriously hammering away, did I suspect he was making a nest, having selected a place on the trunk of the tree about ten feet from the ground, and facing the noon-day sun. He proved to be no stickler for time, working early and late with short intermissions, when he would dart out into the air and stop some passing insect that was quickly disposed of. At the end of two weeks the nest had been completed and on the same day the female arrived. Was it a coincidence? It would seem so, for each succeeding year the male preceded his mate by a fortnight, in which time the place was selected and the new home made ready in which there was no straw, no feathers, nothing but the deep cavernous pocket, clean and fresh, perfumed with the pungent odor of decaying wood.
As the days went by they came to be less afraid of and more neighborly with me, paying little or no attention to my passing or repassing.