Identifier: cu31924000070809 (find matches)
Title: Bird studies for home and school; sixty common birds, their habits and haunts
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: De Groat, Herman C
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: Buffalo, N. Y., Herman C. De Groat
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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dish-brownand lilac, .75 x .55 inches. This Nuthatch is resident with us all the year. In thesummer time and especially during the nesting period it staysin the woods with its own kind, but in winter when sleetystorms have covered the tree trunks with a coating of ice, itmay come into the orchards and gardeils in search of food.Being strictly insectivorous, it never eats anything but grubs,insects and their eggs which it gleans ftom the bark of trees.With great painstaking it explores the trunks of trees, goingup and down them in a zigzag course while clinging firmly tothe bark. Often in winter Nuthatches are found in company withChickadees and Downy Woodpeckers roaming through thewoods in search of food. Perhaps these birds feel the lonelinessof the season due to the absence of most other birds and, likepeople, they come together for companionship. At any rate,they chatter away in bird language much after the manner ofpeople at an evening party. Doubtless, birds are able to under- 52
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90 WHITE-BKEASTED NUTHATCH.Life-size. ifiD CHICAtiO stand one another, for they have varying notes to indicate joy,fear, love, anger and pain which are all well known to observersof birds. Surely the birds must be able to interpret the speechof their own kind. There are few birds more sociable than Nuthatches forthey are seldom long quiet. Even when separated by severalintervening trees, a pair of them maintain a constant flow ofsmall talk. Their most common note is yank, yank, yank,uttered in a hoarse gutteral tone varied in the mating seasonwith tsink, tsink, fsink and hah-hah-hah, a sort of artificiallaugh. Few birds are more familiar to the woodsman in winterthan the Nuthatches. If you go near a flock of them they willpause in their search for food only long enough to have a goodlook at you. Their curiosity may lead one of them to descendthe tree to a point near you, where with head thrust out hori-zontally like a snake, it seems to be inquiring what you want.After concluding that

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