Nuthatches! | Week 6

Hello Birders!

Summary
This week was a very eventful week in terms of our nestboxes. We had lots of new nests, and learned the species of some of our nesters, as well. Usually, most of our nesting birds are chickadees, but we found that some of our nests were occupied by white-breasted nuthatches. These birds are not usually nesting in our boxes; we have only had one nuthatch nest the entire time that I have been a monitor and it unfortunately ended up abandoning its nest quite early on. To summarize, I will upload a photo of this week’s data sheet below.

Nuthatches
Continuing on from what I was saying before about the nuthatches, I thought this week’s blog could be focused on nuthatches. These birds are slate colored with white heads and bellies with a black crown on the tops of their heads. They are most commonly seen on trees climbing head-first down the branches, as you can see in the photo below.

White-breasted Nuthatch – Grayling, MI, USA

I also thought I would mention something interesting about their eggs. Their eggs are speckled white as opposed to being fully white, something I did not know before and just learned when monitoring this last week. I will also insert photos of eggs from both of the nuthatch nests we encountered.

Happy birding and will see you all next week!