Miniature Mites of the Pines: Pygmy Nuthatches in Monterey

For your daily dose of adorable, and to liven up the dreary days of winter, have a look at this family of Pygmy Nuthatches I encountered last July while birding on the coast near Carmel!

Juvenile Pygmy Nuthatch in a Monterey Cypress

Tipping the tiny scales at about one-third of an ounce (or around nine grams, the equivalent weight of nine paperclips), Pygmy Nuthatches are the smallest of the four North American species of nuthatch.  Though small, these little mites of the pines make their presence known as they call to each other with an incessant series of high-pitched piping notes that has been likened to a rubber ducky being squeezed.  Often, this sound pelting down from the treetops is the first indication that these active little birds are in the area.

Juvenile Pygmy Nuthatch, begging for food.

Juvenile Pygmy Nuthatch, awaiting its meal delivery.

Pygmy Nuthatches do everything together: they breed cooperatively, with relatives helping a mated pair raise its brood of up to nine youngsters; they roost communally, with as many as a hundred or more individuals piling into a single cavity to keep warm through cold nights; and flocks move continually as they forage through the trees, often mixing with chickadees, kinglets and other small songbirds.

Adult Pygmy Nuthatch, gleaning tiny insects to feed to its hungry young.

Little stub-tailed balls of frenetic energy, nuthatches seem to be continually on the hunt for food.  Pygmy Nuthatches eat a variety of insects and seeds that they typically glean from the top and outermost branches of pines and other conifers.  

According to Cornell's All About Birds, it takes a whole nine calories per day to fuel one of these active little birds!  That might sound meager, but recall that we're talking about a bird that weighs a scant one-third of an ounce.  If you do the math, that works out to be 27 calories per ounce of weight, and 432 calories per pound.  Multiply that by your own body weight to see how many calories you would have to consume if you ate like a Pygmy Nuthatch!  (For me, that would be a mind-boggling 51,840 calories per day!!!)  Needless to say, using the phrase "eat like a bird" in reference to someone who is a light eater is entirely inaccurate!

Before this encounter with Pygmy Nuthatches, I had never before noticed the pale whitish spot that adult birds have on the back of their heads, visible in this photo as well as the following.

These tiny bundles of energy range across the pine forests of the western United States.  Though they favor open forests of Ponderosa Pine, they also inhabit other types of pine forests where older trees provide the cavities they need for nesting and roosting.  In California, they can be found as high as 10,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada mountains, as well as just above sea level along the coast.  In the longleaf pine forests of the southeastern United States, they are replaced by the similar Brown-headed Nuthatch.

Another juvenile nuthatch, with another hungry mouth to feed!