Sunday, November 10, 2013

Nuthatches in November

Last weekend I spent quite a while watching both white-breasted nuthatches and the smaller red-breasted nuthatches at our feeders. We've commonly been seeing a pair of each -- the males with their black caps and the females with their blue-gray caps. The light was coming from the southeast, passing through the coiled wire wreath-shaped whole-peanut feeder to cast interesting shadows on the birds on the shelled-peanut feeder. Here are some shots from that morning. (To save space in the captions, I use the four-letter "alpha codes" for these birds: WBNU - white-breasted nuthatch and RBNU = red-breasted nuthatch.)

As always, click on any of the photos to see them larger.

Male WBNU - note the crossed primaries (longest wing feathers)

Female WBNU checking her surroundings

Female WBNU in the less-common head-up position. Look at the span of that foot!

Her tongue is visible here -- it's as pointed as her bill

See the spiral shadow -- and a nice view of the strong bill

Female red-breasted nuthatch 

RBNU with spiral shadow
Other posts about nuthatches:

1 comment:

Ela said...

Hello ! Your birds are wonderful.
I love birds especially sparrows. In my graden live sparrows.
Greetings from Poland, Ela !