Family: Sittidae, Nuthatches

 

Description: 4-5" (10-13 cm). Smaller than a sparrow. Upperparts dull blue-gray, underparts whitish. Crown dull brown, with whitish spot on nape.

 

Habitat: Coniferous and mixed forests.

 

Nesting: 5 or 6 white eggs, heavily speckled with red-brown, in a cup of bark, grass, and feathers placed in a cavity in a dead tree or fence post, or under loose bark.

 

Range: Resident from Delaware, Missouri, and eastern Texas south to Gulf Coast and central Florida.

 

 

 

Voice:  A series of high-pitched piping notes, unlike the calls of other eastern nuthatches.

 

Discussion: The smallest of our eastern nuthatches, this species spends more time than the other nuthatches among terminal branches and twigs of trees. After breeding, these birds gather in flocks of a dozen or more and move through the woods along with woodpeckers and chickadees. They are quite agile and restless, flitting from one cluster of pine needles to another.