Nest: Nearly all reported nests of the pygmy nuthatch have been from 8 to 60 feet above ground in cavities excavated by the bird itself in dead or live pine trees (Bent 1948). We found 27 nests in ponderosa pine snags and two in dead aspens in the White Mountains of Arizona.
Food: About 80 percent of the diet is animal material, mostly wasps and spittle insects, including some ants, beetles, and caterpillars; the balance is nearly all conifer seeds (Bent 1948).
Brown creeper
Certhia familiaris
L 4¾″
Habitat: This inconspicuous small bird is fairly common in the coniferous forests of the Transition and Canadian Life Zones. In Colorado, it breeds from 7,000 feet to timberline (Bailey and Neidrach 1965). Creepers winter throughout the forests of the southern states.
Nest: Sometimes creepers nest in natural cavities and old woodpecker holes, but generally they make their nests between the loose bark and the trunk of a large dead tree (Bent 1948). We found three nests behind the loosened bark of dead ponderosa pines and one in a white fir snag in the White Mountains of Arizona.
Food: Few details are known, but the diet is mainly insects, including weevils, leafhoppers, flat bugs, jumping plant lice, scale insects, eggs of katydids, ants and other small hymenoptera, sawflies, moths, caterpillars, cocoons of leaf skeletonizers, pupae of the codling moth, spiders, and pseudoscorpions (Bent 1948). The small amount of vegetable material eaten is chiefly mast.