It is the little nuthatch hard at work scooping out his home in the bark.
The nuthatch is very fond of filberts, as his name implies.
Sometimes when I have disturbed a nuthatch at work at a hole in a tree, the little fellow would pop into the hole and peep out at me, never moving until I had departed.
Overhead, invisible in the lofty thicket of a hemlock's foliage, a squirrel drops a slow patter of cone chips, while undisturbed a nuthatchwinds his spiral way down the smooth trunk.
How daintily he helps himself to the tiniest morsels, never cramming his bill with gross mouthfuls as do his comrades at the board, the nuthatch and the downy woodpecker!
The body and bill of the Nuthatch is stouter, and not such a pretty shape, and his bill almost turns up.
I thought he was some kind of a Nuthatchor a Woodpecker--he was with a whole lot of them up by the house last week.
But at a second glance you will find the Nuthatch is very different.
In fact, this Nuthatch keeps his nest a secret from everybody but his wife and the Dryad of the tree in which he places it; he will not even trust the little branches with his precious home, but makes it in the wood of the tree itself.
In a few minutes I observed it again a few yards off, creeping with a movement resembling that of the Nuthatch up another bush.
But should a Nuthatch happen to appear, all retire until his highness is satisfied.
But the fruit which has an especial charm for the Nuthatch is that from which it derives its name.
The Nuthatch may easily be induced to visit gardens by wedging hazel or Spanish nuts into the bark of trees; a walnut fastened on by a pin is equally effectual.
The Nuthatch is singular, too, in its mode of nidification.
I have rarely noticed a Nuthatch on the ground during winter, but in spring and summer it adds to its diet terrestrial insects and worms and is said also to be partial to red currants--not a singular taste.
The Nuthatch is not an accomplished musician, and claims, therefore, to be pointed out by other characteristics.
He writes from Afghanistan:--"This Nuthatch is very common on the hills.
Captain Cock took the eggs of the White-cheeked Nuthatchlate in May and early in June (1871) in Kashmir at Sonamurg.
In shape the egg is a broad oval (not quite so broad, however, as those of the European Nuthatch are), slightly compressed towards one end.
The Eastern Rock-Nuthatch is abundant in Baluchistan, and without doubt breeds there.
Marshall observes:--"A nest of the Chestnut-bellied Nuthatch was pointed out to me at Umballa in the next garden to mine.
The nuthatch explores the trunks and larger branches of the trees; he goes a little deeper, into crevices of the bark and under lichens.
Evidently the nuthatch thinks there must be food where the chickadees flit and call so cheerily, and the woodpecker is probably drawn to the nuthatch for a similar reason.
Then he may come upon a troop of chickadees, with a nuthatch or two in their wake, and maybe a downy woodpecker.
And that was the reason why little Billy Nuthatch hunted all that Fall for little Sheldon Robin, and never found him.
The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.
The cherry-birds flitted around us, the nuthatch and flicker were heard among the bushes, the titmouse perched within a few feet, and the song of the wood thrush again rang along the ridge.
You could not possibly confuse him with the diligent, placid brown creeper or with the slate-blue nuthatch which also creeps along the branches on the under or upper side.
The nuthatch builds its nest in the holes of old trees, and lays six or seven eggs spotted with red.
Bree, of Allesley, says, that having caught a nuthatch in the common brick trap used by boys, he was struck with the singular appearance of its bill, so unlike that of any bird he had ever seen.
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.
The Wilson thrush and the red-bellied nuthatch I have seen once or twice each.
He knew just what to expect, so when theNuthatch set him down on the bark to look at him, he unhooked his feet from the bark and tumbled to the ground.
The Nuthatch tried to catch him and broke off one of his legs, but she never found him again, although she looked and looked and looked and looked.
When he was young and green he had six, then came a dreadful day when a hungry Nuthatch saw him, flew down, caught him, and carried him up a tree.
The European nuthatchis very fond of nuts, which it cracks in a most curious way.
The nuthatch makes its nest in a hole in a tree, and it is generally composed of small pieces of soft bark, lined with dry leaves.
A sudden clapping of the hands or a sharply spoken word will often cause a nuthatch to assume this attitude.
The Brown-headed Nuthatch is abundant from Louisiana and Florida to the southern part of Maryland.
Wherever in wood or garden the Nuthatchdwells its voice is heard.
Jays and chickadees hold the nut or seed they would peck under the foot, but the nuthatch makes a vise to hold it of the bark of the tree, and one act is just as intelligent as the other; both are the promptings of instinct.
It is the nuthatch and not the woodpecker that hops up and down and around the trees.
Why, again, the chickadee can be induced to perch upon your hand, and take food from it, more readily than can the nuthatch or the woodpecker, is a question not so easily answered.
When the nuthatch carries a fragment of a hickory-nut to a tree and wedges it into a crevice in the bark, the bird is not showing an individual act of intelligence: all nuthatches do this; it is a race instinct.
In Coahuila the Pigmy Nuthatch seems to be locally common.
Typical populations of this White-breasted Nuthatch occur in southern Coahuila.
It was regularly visited, and its thin bole industriously examined, by the nuthatch and the quaint little mouse-like creeper.
They concluded that it was a kind of nuthatch, but unlike the commonnuthatch which they knew.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "nuthatch" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
