Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Perpetual Motion Bird

Nuthatches They are always in motion, never stopping... running up a tree, heading down and circling around,  flying back and forth to the feeder grabbing a seed, to eat or cache for later in the winter. They are busy in the fall building up their cache, each spot containing only one or two items. When opening a seed, or nut, the nuthatch pushes it into a crevice in the bark and hacks it open. Presumably their name is derived from this behavior. You usually see only one at a time but there must be at least two of them since they live in pairs in a permanent territory.

Since they won't ever hold still for a photo you have to be quick with your trigger finger. It's fun watching their swift undulating flight. Their rapid nasal call is probably familiar to most of us.Together with the Chickadee and Titmouse they are our favorite backyard birds.






Look at those amazing long claws that grip the tree and allow to run upside down. 



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This morning I went to an area on the West River to check on the Hooded Mergansers that I had seen there recently, but the water was frozen solid, and no bird in sight. Here are some photos from a previous trip:

Hooded Merganser pair and Canada Goose




Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment.
 Source of information on Nuthatch behavior: Cornell's Birds of North America online

10 comments:

  1. Beautiful action shots on those Nuthatches, Hilke. Boom & Gary.

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  2. I love your photos and the nuthatches. They sound like Peewee Herman!

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  3. Filled the feeder myself today and they stopped by. Excellent capture by the way!

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  4. Excellent. Nuthatches and Chickadees are some of my favorite birds, I think because they are around even on the coldest days.

    I've just set in my winter stores for the feeders, so I'll get them topped up this weekend.

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  5. Wonderful post. I love the nuthatches. The photos are excellant. BTW, I saw both the White breasted and the red breasted in my yard today. Thanks for the visit.

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  6. Oh I LOVE the Nuthatches! Great action you got!!

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  7. Whow...that first shot is awesome. Well done Hilke ... sharp shooting.

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  8. Great Nuthatches Hilke! I love action shots such as these. The dynamics of flight make for supremely dramatic photographs. Thank you for your recent comments on my page. Your words about birds inhabiting a "Parallel Universe" that only infrequently intersects with our own was certainly a fresh concept for me and one that rings true in my initial wonderment of it. You are a long ways ahead of me in your consideration of these issues and I appreciate your well reasoned guidence.

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  9. Absolutely splendid captures of the Nuthatch! I tend to get blurs when trying to get action shots.

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  10. Thank you all for looking at my site and for your kind comments.

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