Brown-headed nuthatch
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Brown-headed Nuthatch in Johnston County, North Carolina |
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| Sitta pusilla | ||||||||||||
| Latham , 1790 |
The brown-headed nuthatch ( Sitta pusilla ) is an American songbird species . It is found in pine forests in the southeastern United States .
features
The brown-headed nuthatch is 9 to 11 cm long, weighs 10 to 11 g and has a wingspan of 16 to 18 cm. It has a brown head cap and a narrow dark eye stripe that delimits the cap. The cheeks and chin are white, the underside of the trunk is dull yellow-brown and the wings are dark and tinged with blue-gray. On the neck, at the transition from the brown of the head to the blue-gray of the back, there is a small white to dirty white spot, which is less pronounced in young birds. The short tail is blue-gray. The eyes, beak, and feet are black. The sexual dimorphism is hardly pronounced. From Nuthatch ( Sitta carolinensis ) and the Nuthatch ( Sitta canadensis differ) leaves it by the head coloration because these are black instead of brown in it. It looks quite similar to the dwarf nuthatch ( Sitta pygmaea ), which can only be found on the west coast of North America, so that the habitats of the brown-headed nuthatch and dwarf nuthatch do not overlap. The brown-headed nuthatch is a resident bird .
The call consists of a high-pitched sound that is emitted twice in quick succession and is reminiscent of a rubber duck . Foraging groups chirp and call pit pit pit .
Occurrence
The brown-headed nuthatch lives in pine forests in the southeastern United States, where it can usually be found in the upper third of pine trees. Its existence there is not endangered. A declining population is found on the island of Grand Bahama ( Sitta pusilla insularis ). This subspecies differs from their continental relatives by a significantly shorter beak and shorter wings. It inhabits the Caribbean pine ( Pinus caribaea ), the population of which has declined sharply due to deforestation. Efforts are being made to raise this subspecies to species status, which would mean greater attention for protection. The brown-headed nuthatch is also found on the Caribbean Turks and Caicos Islands . The subspecies Sitta pusilla caniceps occurs in Florida.
behavior
It opens seeds with its sharp beak. But he also uses his beak to poke a small piece of tree bark under the tree bark for insects. He also uses bits of tree bark to cover the seed stocks he has created. He prefers sunflower seeds and fat on birdhouses. Brown-headed nuthatches are not shy of people. It is in food competition with the pine warbler ( Setophaga pinus ), a winter visitor in the southeastern United States, so that both species of birds now and then try to drive each other away from feeding places. With cockade woodpeckers ( Picoides borealis ), brown-headed nuthatches can be found in mixed groups in winter. Brown-headed nuthatches can use pieces of bark that have been loosened by the woodpeckers. Mixed groups of other nuthatch species are not known.
Reproduction
While brown-headed nuthatches usually sleep in knots or on pine branches, they sleep in the nest, which can be found in the hollows of pine trees, before they lay eggs and during the incubation. The breeding season is between the beginning of March and the end of May. The further south the population, the earlier the breeding season. The eggs are white with reddish brown spots. The breeding season lasts 14 days, after 31 to 32 days the young birds leave the nest and after 56 to 59 days the begging for food ends. The young birds have adult plumage after 90 days at the earliest. A normal clutch consists of three to seven eggs, but occasionally up to nine eggs are incubated.
Brown-headed nuthatch and man
Surname
The species name of the scientific name, pusilla , comes from Latin and means "small, tiny". The English-language name of the bird is "Brown-headed Nuthatch".
Postage stamps
Brown-headed nuthatches can be found on postage stamps, namely a 34-cent stamp from the USA from 2002 and the subspecies Sitta pusilla insularis occurring there on a set of six values (15 to 80 Bahama cents) from the Bahamas from 2006.
swell
Individual evidence
- ↑ Description on the website of the US Geological Survey ( Memento of the original dated December 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ William K. Hayes, Robert X. Barry, Zeko McKenzie, Patricia Barry: Grand Bahama's Brown-headed Nut Hatch: A Distinct and Endangered Species . Bahama Journal of Science 12 (1) 2004, pp. 21–28 ( PDF )
- ↑ Sitta pusilla in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2013.2. Listed by: BirdLife International , 2012. Retrieved November 28, 2013.
- ↑ Erik Matthisen: The Nutchatches . Academic Press, San Diego 1998, pp. 261f. (English)
- ↑ James H. Withgott and KG Smith: Brown-headed nuthatch (Sitta pusilla) in The Birds of North America, No. 349 (English)
- ↑ Bird description page of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (English)
- ↑ Postage stamps with the motif brown-headed nuthatch on bird-stamps.org (English)
literature
- National Geographic Society: Field Guide to the birds of North America. 4th fully rev. and updated Ed., Washington DC 2002, ISBN 0-7922-6877-6 .
Web links
- Videos, photos and audio recordings to Sitta pusilla in the Internet Bird Collection (English)
- xeno-canto: sound recordings - brown-headed nuthatch ( Sitta pusilla )
- Sitta pusilla at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)