Despite being one of the more common local birds, you may have never seen a Pygmy nuthatch. Their miniscule four-inch-long bodies are easy to overlook. They thrive in conifer forest, especially ...

Pygmy nuthatches are frequent visitors to our winter suet feeder. Delightful small birds, Sitta pygmacea often perch upside down. Routinely, we see three to four, their quick movements captivating.

If you see a very agile, active little bird hopping down a tree trunk headfirst, or hanging upside down, it is probably a nuthatch; maybe a red-breasted or a white-breasted nuthatch. I’ve always ...

What is with that crazy bird? Why does he just climb down the tree then fly to the top and then climb down again? It is a nuthatch. It’s habit of hopping headfirst down tree trunks helps it see ...

It's that little bird that often climbs down the trunk of the tree head first. The only bird that is able to do so, it is the nuthatch's foot structure that makes this behavior possible. It has two ...

Bird sounds that always make me chuckle are those of the red-breasted nuthatch. I won’t call them songs because they don’t meet most people’s idea of “song.” The most common call of this species is ...

When we first heard the tin horn-like toots of a red-breasted nuthatch in our yard at the end of July, we were incredulous. While the tiny bird is not out of the ordinary in the lower elevations in ...

A couple years back while deer hunting in southern British Columbia I settled back against a tree to enjoy lunch when the scratching on a nearby tree drew my attention. From less than 10 feet I ...

The white-breasted nuthatch is often observed walking and probing head-down on the trunks of large conifers in mature wooded areas. The first impression is a small bird with a very white head and ...

People who feed birds are probably familiar with the white-breasted nuthatch, a common backyard visitor. They typically fly in to the feeder, grab a sunflower seed and dart off to a nearby tree with ...

The neighborhood keeps changing. One of my reliable sources tells me that pygmy nuthatches—relative newcomers to the East Bay—now nest in the Berkeley hills. A checklist of Berkeley hills birds ...

Old bones are cold bones, I've heard it said, and my old bones have been sticking pretty close to home. That's why I don't have a bird of my own to present this week. Instead, I decided to borrow one.