I Found A Nuthatch

"Here he is, take a good look at him!" That's a quote from an old cartoon I used to like when I was a kid. It came from a woman who would walk up at random times throughout the cartoon and ask the narrator of the cartoon, and ask in a very pitiful voice if he had seen her lost little boy.

After becoming irritated by the interruptions, the narrator yelled at her, "No lady, I have not seen your little boy!" As soon as he was finished, the lady pulled the little boy from behind her back and said, "Here he is, take a good look at him!" It was a funny ending to the cartoon. I always loved that.

But how does this relate to the nuthatch in my pictures? This is the critter that I was asking you to find in yesterday's game. Here he is, take a good look at him!

I'm going to give you the solution to the game a little differently than I usually do. In past games I would show you the same picture, but with a red circle around the hidden critter. This time I have a similar picture, but shot from a different angle. This angle reveals that the critter is a bird that's almost in the very center of the picture.

The bird is slightly higher up in this picture, but if you go back and look at yesterday's picture you should be able to see him now. He was a little lower than right in the middle, but still hidden very well. Like I said yesterday, he was hidden right out in the open. It's obvious when you finally see him.

Here's a much closer look at him so you know exactly what a nuthatch is. It's a little bird with a blue gray upper body, a black cap, and a white belly. This one is particularly a White-breasted Nuthatch. I checked, and they do look slightly similar to the Eurasian Tree Creeper, with similar behavior.

That last bit was in response to a particular comment in yesterday's post. Some of you got the location of this critter exactly right, even adding some valuable information. Other guesses were delightful in their humor. Some of you didn't quite find the bird, but you made excellent guesses that I thought of as well while I was searching the photo.

Your comments really do help me, and anyone else who cares to read them, learn so much about nature. All of us combined can learn so much. Thank you.

Now for a little bit of information. These birds like to hang out in deciduous or mixed forests. They can be found in much of Canada and the United States, except for the most of the Great Plain states. Nuthatches have a habit of creeping headfirst down a tree trunk, then stopping to look around with their heads held out at a 90 degree angle.

They can be found all year round, mostly staying in pairs. They also seem to be very social birds, joining mixed flocks of chickadees, woodpeckers, and kinglets in the winter. And they are very frequent visitors to bird feeders.

Okay, that's enough of that! On to more pictures!

I told you yesterday that I had some stunning pictures. I think some are more stunning that others, but I like them all very much. This one above is one of my favorites, even if it's not the clearest.

-Nature Center-

And finally, this last one had to be fixed up a bit. It doesn't look great when it's expanded, but I did what I could to sharpen it a bit. I liked the bird's pose too much to leave it out. I hope you liked them all as well as I did.

This has been an extra long post from me this time. I considered breaking it up into two, but I already promised some of these pictures. This also gives me something fresh and new to bring to you tomorrow. Being able to see the birds is one of the good things about winter. But I'm beginning to see the first little signs of spring already.

I'll be back tomorrow for another thrilling episode of The Everyday Adventurer!