Could I ever be satisfied were I located in some nook of this old earth
where the voice of the nuthatch is not heard once in a while! His simple
song--I speak of the white-breasted nuthatch--beats time to my daily
routine of laboratory and field work and its very simplicity adds
dignity to my little friend's life. All will easily recognize this
useful little neighbor. His coat is of light blueish gray above, with a
crown, nap, and upper back black. His tail and wings have black
markings, while his lower parts and sides of head are white in the main.
It is remarkable to find the nuthatch so ready to make friends with us,
when he is generally considered a forest bird in this part of the
country.
I see two or three of them near my office every day, and take much
delight in my study of them and their habits. They have a peculiar way
of perching, head downward, on the trunk of a tree and go that way most
of the time. A small white-breasted bird on the trunk of a tree with
head downward, is pretty good evidence that it is the nuthatch. This
attitude is so natural that the older ornithologists--Audubon and
Wilson--claim that they sleep in that position. I am not prepared to
affirm or deny the rumor as my study of this bird, and all other birds,
is restricted to their daylight comedies and tragedies, though I do
often hear certain members of bird families singing at all hours of the
night during certain seasons.
His song is, as above stated, quite simple only one note repeated over
and over--konk-konk, konk-konk, two strokes generally in rapid
succession--a kind of a nasal piping, or as one bird lover has said:
"A peculiar, weird sound, somewhat like the quack of a duck, but higher
keyed and with less volume, having a rather musical twang."
[Illustration: MY CHICKADEE'S NEST]
During the winter months he finds much time to search about on the
ground for food, and consequently his crop is at such time partly filled
with noxious weed seeds. In spring and summer, he searches all round the
trunks and branches of trees for small insects and insect eggs, and as
you approach him to study him he seems entirely unconscious of your
presence, which I have thought almost approaches human affectation, and
I wonder if this is not one of the alluring arts of the white-breasted
nuthatch. Birds, in some way or other, express almost all human
attributes, love, hate, anger, joy, sorrow, if we only are able to read
them, and it is not unreasonable to assume that they are sometimes
affectatious. The Southern mocking bird certainly seems to border vanity
sometimes.