We don’t have any back yard nuthatches at our home here in DeBary, Florida. I sure wish we did, because they are so much fun to watch! Boogieing up and down trees, calling out like little squeeze toys, zipping around the yard…
Last month, while visiting my parents in northern Illinois, I thoroughly enjoyed checking out their feeder birds, which included a group of at least three White-breasted Nuthatches. One bird in particular was busy caching sunflower seeds. Often it would grab a seed and fly out of the yard to caches unknown. But a few times it worked on sticking seeds into a nearby stretch of old wooden fence. It was a lot of fun to watch this bird grab seeds
The ghost of White-breasted Nuthatch strikes again
and fly the short distance to the fence at the back of the yard, seeking the best possible location to stash its precious seed.
Once the perfect spot was found, the nuthatch had to cram the seed in place. Sometimes this required minor body contortions.
After caching several seeds in the fence, the nuthatch tried out a new spot. Pressing a hard seed into gnarly bark was a much quicker affair.
Brown-headed Nuthatches are the only nuthatch species we usually expect to find here in central Florida. This fall, great numbers of Red-breasted Nuthatches have been moving south. This afternoon, a Florida birder reported seeing one in my county (Volusia). I hope to add a second nuthatch species to my county list very, very soon.
