The White-Breasted Nuthatch {suta caroUnensis) 



By W. Leon Dawson 



Length : 6 inches. White below, above gray, with a black head. 

 Range: Resident in the United States, southern Canada, and Mexico. 

 Habits and economic status : This bird might readily be mistaken by a 

 careless observer for a small woodpecker, but its note, an oft-repeated yank, is 

 very unwoodpecker-like, and, unlike either woodpeckers or creepers, it climbs 

 downward as easily as upward and seems to set the laws of gravity at defiance. 

 The name was suggested by the habit of wedging nuts, especially beechnuts, in 

 the crevices of bark so as to break them open by blows from the sharp, strong 

 bill. The nuthatch gets its living from the trunks and branches of trees, over 

 which it creeps from daylight to dark. Insects and spiders constitute a little 

 more than 50 per cent of its food. The largest items of these are beetles, moths, 

 and caterpillars, with ants and wasps. The animal food is all in the bird's favor 

 except a few ladybird beetles. More than half of the vegetable food consists 

 of mast, i. e., acorns and other nuts or large seeds. One-tenth of the food is 

 grain, mostly waste corn. The nuthatch does no injury, so far as known, and 

 much good. 



Who-ew-o-o-o — 0-0-0-0-0-0 goes the screech owl in broad daylight. There 

 is an instant hush in the dull gray woods — a hush followed by an excited 

 murmur of inquiry among the scattered members of a winter bird troop. If 

 you happen to be the screech owl, seated motionless at the base of some larger 

 tree and half recessed in its spreading roots, perhaps the first intimation you 

 will have that the search party is on your trail will be the click, click, click, of 

 tiny claws on the tree-hole above your head, followed by a- quank of interroga- 

 tion, almost comical for its mixture of baffled anxiety and dawning suspicion 

 of the truth. He is an inquisitive fellow, this nuthatch ; for, you see, prying 

 is his business ; but he is brave as well. The chances are that he will venture 

 down within a foot or two of your face before he flutters off with a loud outcry 

 of alarm. When excited, as when regarding a suspicious object, he has an odd 

 fashion of rapidly right-and-left facing on a horizontal bough, as though to try 

 both eyes on you and lose no time in between. 



Nuthatch is the acknowledged acrobat of the woods — not that he acts for 

 display ; it is all business with him. A tree is a complete gymnasium in itself, 

 and this bird is master of it all. Top side, bottom side, inside, outside — this bird 

 is there, fearless, confident ; in fact, he rather prefers traveling head downwards, 

 especially on the main trunk route. He pries under bark-scales and lichens, peers 

 into crevices and explores cavities in his search for tiny insects, larvae and insects' 

 eggs — especially the latter. The value of the service which this bird and his 

 close associates perform for the horticulturist is simply incalcuable. There 

 should be as heavy a penalty imposed upon one who wantonly killed a nuthatch 



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