{"id":420,"date":"2010-02-25T22:34:41","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T03:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/?p=420"},"modified":"2010-02-25T22:38:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T03:38:22","slug":"white-breasted-nuthatch-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"White-breasted Nuthatch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cold weather has returned, and yesterday morning was drizzly and gray when I stepped out on the deck. From a dark stand of pines just inside the woods, a White-breasted Nuthatch called ahnk!<\/em> It\u2019s not a very glamorous sound, but it’s one I don\u2019t hear often around here, and\u00a0the bird making it is a cool, graceful little bird with a black crown and half-collar, blue-gray back, snow-white throat and breast, and a long, sharp bill, and to see one is a little like seeing a celebrity for me.<\/p>\n

Although sociable, pine-loving Brown-headed Nuthatches are regular visitors to our feeders and the woods around the neighborhood, the more aloof White-breasted Nuthatches are not, probably because they prefer mature deciduous woodland and mixed forest, while our woods are younger and rougher, with few large, dignified trees, either pines or hardwoods. Every once in a while though, like today, one or two come around.<\/p>\n

I tried for several minutes to find the White-breasted Nuthatch, but the light was gray and blurry. It gave its one-syllable ahnk<\/em> call several more times, but remained invisible somewhere among the misty pine branches and foliage, a little too far away to see.<\/p>\n

Blackbird Flock \u2013 Mostly Common Grackles<\/span><\/h2>\n

Later in the morning a large flock of blackbirds flew in and spread over the grass and trees in several yards in the neighborhood. There were maybe 500 birds \u2013 a very rough estimate. All I saw were Common Grackles and a few Red-winged Blackbirds. I could not find any Rusty Blackbirds among them, though there were many in the trees and further away that I couldn\u2019t see well, and they were, as usual, restless and moving from place to place. There\u2019s something disorienting about trying to distinguish one blackbird from another in a flock on the ground. It\u2019s like an optical illusion in motion. I know what I\u2019m supposed to see, but just can\u2019t quite find it. But it was a good feeling just to stand among so many and to hear them \u2013 a loud congregation of creaky blackbird voices all around. When a truck drove past they all flew up with that sudden thumping rush of wings and moved in waves, even further away, too soon. It was nice to see a fairly large flock again, and I hope maybe to run into them again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cold weather has returned, and yesterday morning was drizzly and gray when I stepped out on the deck. From a dark stand of pines just inside the woods, a White-breasted Nuthatch called ahnk! It\u2019s not a very glamorous sound, but it’s one I don\u2019t hear often around here, and\u00a0the bird making it is a cool, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}