64 Bird Comrades 



9 



A still smaller member of this group is the brown- 

 headed nuthatch (Sitta pusilla), a resident of the South 

 Atlantic and Gulf states, at rare intervals wandering 

 "accidentally" as far north as Missouri and New York. 

 A daintily dressed little fellow is this bird, the top and 

 back of his head a dark grayish brown with a whitish 

 patch on the nape, the remainder of his upper parts being 

 bluish gray and his under parts grayish white . His favorite 

 dwelling places are in the pine woods of the south, where he 

 is on the most cordial terms socially with the pine warbler 

 and the red-cockaded woodpecker. A most active little 

 body, he scampers from the roots of the trees to the ter- 

 minal twigs at the top, inspecting every cone, cranny and 

 knot hole, chirping his fine, high-keyed notes, sometimes in 

 a querulous tone, and again in the most cheerful and good- 

 natured temper imaginable, now gliding up a tree trunk, 

 now scudding down head foremost, anon circling in a spiral 

 course. 



One autumn I found a number of these nuthatches 

 associated with a flock of myrtle warblers on the most 

 sociable terms in a pine woodland not far from Pensacola, 

 Florida. Now they were up in the trees, now down on 

 the ground. All the while they were chirping in their 

 most genial tones. In a spring jaunt to southern Missis- 

 sippi, I was fortunate enough to find a nest in a half- 

 decayed snag. It contained four of the prettiest half- 

 fledged bird babies that have ever greeted my sight. 



Oddly enough, our tiny clamberers utter a loud, shrill 

 alarm-call that bears close resemblance to the querulous 



