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 ...

Have you walked under some pine trees and heard what sounds like a rubber duck? I suspect it wasn’t a rubber duck but one of our smallest local birds communicating with companions as it foraged for ...

Sitting on a bench surrounded by 70-foot-tall Norway spruces, I watch a red-breasted nuthatch take a peanut from a feeder in my front yard. There’s a cool breeze on this sunny autumn day, and I know ...

Back in 2004, in what now seems like another life, I had a memorable experience on my way to work. Walking east along Wacker Drive, I noticed what looked like a leaf floating toward the sidewalk. It ...

The pygmy nuthatches, each small enough to hide inside a tennis ball, redirected my thoughts from watching elk to listening to the world. In the middle distance an elk harem casually grazed while the ...

The presence of this nuthatch is typically announced by its nasal calls. The red-breasted nuthatch has the un­usual habit of smearing resin around the entrance hole to its nest, presumably to deter ...

The closest year-round populations of Mexican jays are in the Gila, where extreme drought and wildfires have decimated the ...

Less gregarious than other nuthatches, the white-breasted nuthatch is typically seen singly or in pairs. In fall and winter, it regularly forms small mixed-species flocks, but a single flock rarely ...

I wrote three weeks ago about my affinity for the nuthatches we see in New England. In the middle and southern parts of the region we see White-breasted Nuthatches much more frequently than its ...

Why squint in search of a dinky red-breasted nuthatch when you can scan the skies for a rare raptor with a seven-foot wing ...