Salt Lake Herald | 1895-02-24 | Page 6 | Their Own Nutcrackers

THEIR OWV iUTCRACKERS I Busy Birds Which You May See in the Woods Tills Month i nj Perhaps you will like to hear of a curl = ous little bird Go out Into the woods In January or February any time and you may see him He is about six inches long He wears a black cap a grayish blue coat and a dirty white shirt He runs up and down the tree trunks searching diligently for little Insects who think they have hidden themselves safely away in some little crack in the bark He Is a quIet little fellow having no song The only noise he makes Is a harsh callwhich sounds like the word quank This bird Is called the nuthatch because he is fond of nuts cracking them open and eating the kernels You may see one of them take an acorn as big as his head and fixing it in some crevice in the tree pound away on it with his little bill until it breaks open and rewards the little worker with a meal These birds are also expert gymnasts They will run up a tree going swiftly round and round it all the way up Then quIckly turning about they will comedown come-down the trunk head first in the same fashion stopping now and then to snag up some little bug or worm which has ventured out to see what the matter is i Country boys sometimes speak of these birds as little devil down heads But this Is longer and not so pretty as the nuthatch