White-Breasted Nuthatch

Someone in the family who has recently joined the ranks of bird watchers emailed me to ask what the bird that he had photographed was. He had photographed a white-breasted nuthatch.

This nuthatch is so often seen in the Colvin Run Habitat that he gets little mention in the blog. Past nuthatch blogs are at http://crhabitat.blogspot.com/search/label/Nuthatch. Here are four nuthatch photos taken this winter in the Habtiat.

As you can see from first three of the photos, this guy loves to eat – one at the suet nut feeder, one with a piece of suet in his beak, and one seeking food in the bark of the maple tree. The food could be sap, like the sapsucker, or food stored earlier. www.enature.com says that, “the nuthatch in the fall stores food for winter in crevices behind loose tree bark.”

The other thing that you can see from three of the photos, the nuthatch spends most of his time upside down on the trees and feeders. Creeping headfirst down a tree trunk is a trait of the nuthatch.