Even the bears don’t know that it’s past their bedtime. But, December begins tomorrow, and New Hampshire Fish and Game says that the bears should be in bed by then so that we can safely put out our bird feeders. I have sneaked in a couple of feeders on the front of our house where bears don’t seem to venture, but the real birdfeeder action is in back nearer the woods and fields. In any event, the migrating birds are mostly gone, and the hardy “year arounders” remain. So far, we have had cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, titmice, assorted finches, flocks of mourning doves, juncos, our three types of woodpeckers, the ubiquitous house sparrows, some robins that may stay the winter, and occasional cameo appearances and surprise visits by others. What am I forgetting? Of course, the upside down birds, especially meaningful in the upside down world of 2020, the nuthatches!

There are four species of nuthatches in North America, and only two of them are common in New England. Until recently, I was only familiar with the white-breasted nuthatch that frequented our feeders in winter and the woods around our house in the summer. But last spring I was introduced to the red-breasted version and have seen and heard it frequently ever since. Unlike the white-breasted nuthatch, the red-breasted variety tends to migrate a little to the south in winter - so we will be watching to see if that is true in central New Hampshire.

Nuthatches have strong legs and a strong beak. They walk head-first down tree trunks without using their tail for balance (as the woodpeckers do), and they bang open (hatch) seeds with their beaks. But, the nuthatch name may derive from their earlier nickname - the nut hackers. Unlike the woodpeckers with two toes pointing in each direction, the nuthatches have only their large toe pointing backwards and three toes forward, but this still facilitates their acrobatic clinging to tree trunks.

Nuthatches nest in tree cavities either using those naturally-formed, repurposing cavities created by woodpeckers, or building their own. They aggressively defend their territories and their nests. White-breasted nuthatches will smear very stinky and toxic blister beetles around the nest entrance to deter predators. Blister beetles get their name from their secretion of the blistering agent, cantharidin (a primary ingredient in a folk medicine known as “spanish fly”). Their red-breasted cousins protect their nests by lining the entrance with sticky conifer resin.

Nuthatches are not known for melodious singing, but they can be loud and persistent - especially in the spring. Most of them have a nasal twang to a repetitive “yank yank” sound though the white-breasted and red-breasted songs do differ.