Red-Breasted Nuthatch

Thot has not kept pace with our mechanical advance. Airplanes and cars have penetrated into unexplored spaces but a majority of human algae probably still believe the earth is flat. In fact a gentleman set forth this year (1928) from these United States to prove that theory! But there are rifts in the fog. Most of us no longer believe in a personal devil with horns, tail and vermilion skin and it is a safe guess that bird students the world over do not subscribe to the legend that the Nuthatch received its name because it was hatched from an incubated nut.

The RED-BREAST prefers coniferous forests of secluded areas and is, in consequence, less often seen than its larger relative. They are friendly little chaps notwithstanding their exclusiveness. While lunching one September noon in the Maine woods a pair but-butted and quank-quanked for half an hour in the spruces within a few feet and one venturesome mite investigated the piece of bacon I offered him but was not quite courageous enuf to alight on my fingers. He would advance in hesitant little hops along the down trunk I was seated upon and bill the bacon inquiringly but refused to leave the familiar bark for the strange territory of my hand. He did not eat the bacon.

They seemed glad to find company in those lonesome woods and accompanied me with cheery quanks for nearly a mile. I wondered if they were the same two that had raised a family in the Spring and still lived together, or had they met by chance and were just keeping company for sociability? Quien sabe!

The field of speculation is one of the charms of birding and they are wise who do not stray from it into the weeds of dogmatic statement.

Nuthatches are expert wing shots. I have seen them sally into the air from a beach cedar perch and catch flying insects with Phoebe accuracy. One fearless Nimrod even had the courage to seize and bring to the dune a Monarch butterfly that, in company with thousands of its kind, was struggling southward in September.