Red Breasted Nuthatch – Desire
oil and mixed media on panel
Caroline James, 2006
One bird species learns another’s lingo (MSNBC.com)
When we lived in the woods, we had our own flock of nuthatches. They were our favorite birds. The chickadees, finches, grosbeaks – all the other small, flocking birds – were amusing; the pileated woodpecker was way too vain; the jays were flipping obnoxious; but the nuthatches were smart. (Which was kind of surprising, considering the amount of time they spent banging their heads on hard surfaces to crack seeds).
Although it was fairly routine for the other small birds to smash into windows or be eaten by hawks, I don’t remember ever seeing such an accident befall a nuthatch. A new study in PNAS suggests that nuthatches are able to understand other birds’ warning calls and use the information encoded in them to avoid predators. This is one of those rather unsurprising findings – if you know nuthatches. But still pretty cool.
Caroline James is a Canadian artist based in British Columbia – where there are a lot of red-breasted nuthatches (Sitta canadensis).
You can listen to the nuthatch call here – they sound like they’re laughing nasally at you, and who knows, maybe they are. . .