nuthatch introduces...nuthatch

As my nickname indicates, my favorite birds are nuthatches.  As birds that typically forage by hitching head-first down tree trunks and other substrates, they appeal to my contrarian nature.  They don't take the upside-down route just to be different, of course; it's just that doing things in reverse allows them to exploit food resources that may be missed by birds that do things a little more conventionally.

There are 24 species of nuthatches in the genus Sitta.  Sometimes included in the nuthatch family is the fantastic Wallcreeper (Tichodroma muraria), described in Harrap and Quinn's Chickadees, Tits, Nuthatches, and Treecreepers as "elegant and enigmatic" and "flamboyant".  This Eurasian rock-face specialist is the bird in the world that I most want to see.  One day when my husband travels to southern Germany for work, we will search for one wintering on the face of a castle.

Two dozen species isn't many, and only four nuthatches are found in the New World -- White-breasted (S. carolinensis), Red-breasted (S. canadensis), Pygmy (S. pygmaea), and Brown-headed (S. pusilla).  Now it looks like we may be able to add one more to the list: Bahama Nuthatch, Sitta insularis. 

This is currently considered a subspecies of Brown-headed Nuthatch (the species I use for my photo on the About page of this blog). A recent paper in the Bahamas Journal of Science reports that distinctive vocalizations and larger-billed, shorter-winged morphology distinguish this race, and the authors believe it should be elevated to full species status.  The Bahama Nuthatch inhabits an extremely rare and increasingly threatened habitat type, Caribbean pine forest, only on the island of Grand Bahama.   The population is small, and the what appears to be the bulk of the population lives in a pine forest that is privately owned and where development is considered by the authors to be "inevitable."

Conservation for the Bahama Nuthatch is urgently needed, lest it go the way of the Grand Bahama race of the West Indian Woodpecker (Melanerpes superciliaris bahamaensis) and the New Providence race of the endemic Bahama Yellowthroat (Geothlypis rostrata rostrata), which are believed to be extinct.  The world already has too few nuthatches, in my opinion.  I'll support the Caribbean program of BirdLife International and its work in preserving the unique avian biodiversity of the West Indies, especially its newest star, the Bahama Nuthatch.

Comments

[Mark O'Brien]

Ahh, the red-breasted nuthatch is MY favorite.

[Rick Rogers]

I have seen a nuthatch in my yard lately in NJ, that looks like the typical on in size and shape, although the gray-bluish back is a chocolate brown instead. Same stripe throught the eye and pale redish underneath ... any ideas?