By Sally Siko

Have you ever heard the sound of what seems to be a squeaky toy emanating from the treetops here in North Carolina? You may have just had an encounter with a brown-headed Nuthatch.
I spotted this little one while birding this past weekend at the Weymouth Woods Sandhills Preserve.
This bird’s diminutive size and active lifestyle make it tough to spot, but once you know what to look and listen for, you’ll realize it is a common year-round resident throughout our state’s pine woods.
By virtue of their strong, sharp claws, brown-headed Nuthatches are capable of crawling head-first down the trunk of trees as easily as going up. Their coloration creates perfect camouflage against the tree trunks that the birds can be found foraging on, in search of seeds and insects.

Though the Brown headed Nuthatch is found throughout the entire state of N.C. though they’re most commonly seen in the piedmont and coastal plain regions. Their preference of habitats include mature and open longleaf pine stands found in the dry Sandhills areas, however, they also can be spotted in open areas of loblolly and shortleaf pine stands found near ponds and lakes.

As you might expect given the Brown headed Nuthatches proclivity to foraging pine forests, they eat their fare share of pine seeds. Being omnivores, they also consume a large number of insects, larvae and spiders too.In fact these clever creatures are one of a few species of birds in the world to use tools to access the insects hidden beneath the bark of trees.Using a short (but strong) stick, they’ll pry away the bark from the trunk to find a six or eight legged meal hiding inside.Pretty neat huh?

Photos by @sally_siko of @bestlife_birding on my mighty mirrorless monster, the @canonusa #R5