So far, this fall has brought more birds and more variety of birds to local backyards. The white-breasted nuthatch, a fairly common bird in our area, is just a little more common than usual lately.

Jan. 4—One of life's little pleasures is to watch birds coming to the feeder in the winter. Frequent visitors to my feeder include cardinals, chickadees, tufted titmice, house finches, downy ...

The red-breasted nuthatch may be the perfect winter quest for birders locally. This is definitely the less common nuthatch of northern winters. Its close relative, the white-breasted nuthatch is much ...

Less gregarious than other nuthatches, the white-breasted nuthatch is typically seen singly or in pairs. In fall and winter, it regularly forms small mixed-species flocks, but a single flock rarely ...

Red-breasted nuthatches are one of my favorite birds. Admittedly, I have a lot of favorites, but these are at the top of my list perhaps because they, as birds with a more northerly range than the ...

Despite being one of the more common local birds, you may have never seen a Pygmy nuthatch. Their miniscule four-inch-long bodies are easy to overlook. They thrive in conifer forest, especially ...

Sitting on a bench surrounded by 70-foot-tall Norway spruces, I watch a red-breasted nuthatch take a peanut from a feeder in my front yard. There’s a cool breeze on this sunny autumn day, and I know ...

I did a double-take the other morning when I saw a nuthatch checking out the suet feeder in my yard on the outskirts of Decatur. It was neither a white-breasted nuthatch nor a brown-headed nuthatch — ...

The presence of this nuthatch is typically announced by its nasal calls. The red-breasted nuthatch has the un­usual habit of smearing resin around the entrance hole to its nest, presumably to deter ...

People who feed birds are probably familiar with the white-breasted nuthatch, a common backyard visitor. They typically fly in to the feeder, grab a sunflower seed and dart off to a nearby tree with ...