Downy, Red Head, and the other woodpecker cousins are not the only birds that take care of the trees. They pull out the grubs and beetles that have made their homes inside the trunks.
No other birds can do this. Only the woodpeckers have chisel bills and hammer heads to cut through the wood. So no others can break into the homes of the wood grubs.
But the inside of the tree is not the only part that needs to be protected. Caterpillars eat the leaves. Bugs suck the juices from the twigs.
Birds like the orioles and summer yellowbirds are protectors of the leaves. They pick off hundreds of chewing caterpillars and sucking bugs.
The best time of all to catch caterpillars and bugs is before they begin to crawl, before they have feet. That is when they are eggs, hidden in the bark.
There are many tiny insects, too, that live in the bark of trees. Little as they are, though, they eat great holes in trees.
So there are bird protectors who take care of the bark of trees. That is what the nuthatches do. A nuthatch does not have a stout bill that can dig into the trunk of a tree. He does not need it.
It takes many of these wee insects and insect eggs to make a breakfast or a dinner. The nuthatch does not have much time for anything but getting his food. Whenever you see him, he is almost sure to be pecking on the bark of some tree.
And this little gray bird is almost sure, too, to be standing upside down. You can always know him by that. You would be less likely to notice him if he stood with his head up and his tail down, like other birds.
The largest nuthatch of all is not very large, hardly as big as an English sparrow. He has a gray back and gray sides. His breast is white, so he is called the white-breasted nuthatch. His cheeks are white, and a big black spot covers the top of his head and the back of his neck. The end of his pointed tail is black, too.
Some people call the white-breasted nuthatch a tree mouse. He does move about quickly, like a little mouse running about after crumbs. He is gray, and so is a mouse. But the nuthatch is a pretty blue-gray, and his white breast is not like the breast of a mouse.
The nuthatch is almost as quiet as a mouse when he is pecking on the bark of a tree. You cannot hear him tap-tapping, as you can the woodpecker. But now and then he raises his head and calls out. Then he does make a noise. You could not call it a song.
“Whank, whank, whank!” the little bird calls. Perhaps he is saying to the trees, “Thank, thank, thank—you for my dinner.” Only it ought to be the trees saying to him, “Thank, thank, thank you—for pecking all those bugs and insect eggs out of my bark.”
Winter and summer the nuthatch keeps at his work. When the top of a branch is covered with snow, he runs along underneath it. He not only hangs by his feet, upside down. He runs upside down, too, like a fly on the ceiling. Not another bird can do that.
The woodpecker can prop himself on the side of a tree. The chickadee can hang by his feet from a twig. But neither the woodpecker nor the chickadee can walk upside down.
Head up or head down, it is all the same to the nuthatch. He is not very big, but his feet are large, and he has strong curved toenails with which he holds on to the bark of a tree.
As fall comes on, the nuthatch begins to store away food for the winter. There will be eggs in the bark in winter, but there will not be any caterpillars and bugs and spiders. If the nuthatch is to be sure of something to eat, he must store something away in his pantries.
The nuthatch has pantries scattered all about, wherever he can find very small holes. Into these holes he packs grains of corn or beechnuts.
The nuthatch is very careful about his pantries. They must be just the right size for what he has to put into them. He tries a grain of corn or a beechnut in one hole after another till he finds one that it just fits. Then the little bird hammers the nut into the hole with his strong bill, so that the nut cannot fall out, no matter how much the wind blows the trees about.
When winter comes and food is scarce, the nuthatch looks up some of his stored corn and nuts. Sometimes he has to brush the snow off the place where he has packed the food away.
When he finds one of his nuts, the nuthatch does not take it out of the hole. He breaks it just as the red-headed woodpecker does. He uses his bill for a hatchet, and splits the nut open. Then it is easy to pick out the kernel. The hard shell is left inside the hole. That is where the nuthatch gets his name. It means nutsplitter.
The worst time for the nuthatch is when there is a sleet. The ice freezes over the bark of the trees and the nuthatch cannot hook his toes into it. Nor can he break into it with his bill. His pantry has been locked up by Jack Frost and he cannot open it.
That is the time when the nuthatch likes to be fed. We cannot give him insect eggs, for we do not have them. But we can give him suet and tallow, and how he does enjoy them!
Tie a piece of suet on the branch of a tree in winter, and see the nuthatch pick off bits of it with his toothpick bill. His “Whank, whank!” then surely must mean “Thank you so much.”
The nuthatch also eats broken pieces of nuts, hemp seed, and doughnut crumbs. The fat and oil in these help to keep him warm during the very cold weather.
The nuthatch is like the Eskimo. The Eskimo eats a great deal of fat, because he lives where the weather is very cold. The nuthatch stays outdoors during our cold winters, and so fat keeps him warm, too.
Early in spring the nuthatch finds a mate for himself. His little mate looks very much like him, except that her head is not so black as his.
The nuthatch is very polite to his mate. Sometimes if he finds a very nice mouthful indeed, he gives it to her to eat. He seems to say, “Here, my dear, just taste this. It is very good.” But all he says aloud is, “Whank, whank!”
Soon the nuthatch and his mate begin to build their nest. The first thing they do is to find a hole in a tree. They could dig one out if they had to, but it would be very hard work.
Nuthatches like to build in old woodpeckers’ nests, but any good hole will do. Into it they bring leaves, hair, and feathers to make a soft bed for their babies.
And how many babies there are in a nuthatch family! Sometimes there will be as many as ten in one nest. Often there are eight. Five is a very small family for them.
When the little ones are hatched, the father and mother birds are busier than ever. They bring their babies caterpillars, spiders, and bugs that they find in the bark of the trees.
When the nuthatch children are old enough, they go out with their mother and begin to hunt in the bark for themselves. It is funny to see a mother nuthatch with four or five babies coming down the tree behind her.
There is nothing lazy about the nuthatch. Often after one nestful of children is grown, the mother bird lays more eggs. Then the hard work of raising a big, hungry family begins all over again.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — By the Roadside (Dunn and Troxell)/An Upside-down Bird. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.