My friend Dr. Pearson's acquaintance with this bird is so much wider than mine that I quote his description.

"The BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH is found thruout the pine woods of the Southern States. It is rarely seen outside these coniferous forests where its diminutive size renders it less conspicuous than the better known White-breasted Nuthatch. It does not feed along the tree trunks like the latter, confining its search for insects and their eggs to higher branches or among cones and terminal twigs."

They usually travel in bands, probably family groups of the past Spring, as weeks before the young leave the nest more than two seldom are seen together.

Altho very small, these birds possess wonderful power when excavating their nesting site in some rotten stump. Of the hundred or more nests that I have examined, few were more than twelve feet from the ground altho occasionally located forty feet up. The nest entrance is rarely circular, and sometimes when the wood is hard it looks more like a crack in the tree than a bird's doorway. The excavation is from five to eight inches deep and scented with the characteristic, not unpleasant, musky odor possessed by the parents. One readily can detect recent occupancy by the aroma issuing from the hole.

They have few natural enemies altho I remember once looking into a nest that contained a snake which I subsequently discovered had swallowed the female bird.