Biodiversions: Pygmy Nuthatch

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted on May 19, 2009

Crossposted from Yips and Howls

I’ve been planting fruit trees, digging up sod, preparing vegetable beds, and planting seeds on our property in northeastern Oregon.  But especially on hot days, it’s tempting to wile away the hours in the shade of some old apple trees downhill from our yurt and watch the birds - yellow-bellied sapsuckers, bluebirds, sparrows, wrens.  Each of the ten or so trees has at least one cavity that contains an active nest.  I’m especially intrigued by the pygmy nuthatches (Sitta pygmaea).

Pygmy nuthatch in old apple tree near Flora, Oregon

The nuthatches usually disappear when I first sit down under their one of their nests, but by the time I finish a cup of coffee, they return.  The other day, I watched the birds flit in and out of a cavity about six feet up the trunk of a dead apple tree.  Some large black ants nested further down - a great source of food.  But perhaps it’s not a nuthatch favorite, since for every ant they snatched right below their nest, they caught several other bugs on the wing.  Or perhaps they enjoy the flying chase more.  It’s a wonderful sight, which I failed to capture on camera.  The birds took each bug to an upper branch of the tree and rapped it this way and that against the wood before taking it into their nest.

The pygmy nuthatch is one of only two species in the world that relies on cooperation from helpers - often male progeny of other breeding pairs - to tend their nests.  Since both males and females look alike, I could not tell individuals apart and do not know how many served the nest I watched. Sialis.org has some wonderful photos of young nuthatches inside the nst.

Pygmy nuthatch after catching a bug

The presence of pygmy nuthatches is one indicator of healthy ponderosa pine forests (which I wrote about last week).  Our orchard is surrounded by ponderosa pines, so I’m hoping that pygmy nuthatches nesting in apple trees means an abundant, opportunistic population rather than a lack of proper nest sites in the pines. But I’ll be looking for more of these birds through my walks in the woods and thinking about them as we make plans for how to maintain and improve the health of our pine forest.

For more information visit:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology: All About Birds