ON THE WILD SIDE Peanut poachers
● AS the leaves start to fall, you may spot activity on tree trunks you have never noticed before. Tiny little birds running up and down – and not just our handsome woodpeckers! Today I’m giving a shout out to our pound-shop woodpeckers – nuthatches and treecreepers.
Nuthatches are stout, attractive little blue and orange chaps – they look a bit like someone put a kingfisher in the wash for too long and it faded.
They used to be fairly rare, but with so many people putting out feeders in their gardens they have spread all over the UK. This is despite studies showing nuthatches never move more than half a mile or so from where they were born. They are another bird that does not like to cross water, so sorry Ireland. But at least you get treecreepers.
A pair of noisy nuthatches visit my garden and are responsible for a great many sunflowers sprouting up where they are not supposed to. They like to pinch nuts from your feeders and wedge them somewhere they can get a firm hold while they peck them open. Places like tree trunks, between paving stones, inside my old rotten wooden window frames…I find nuts and seeds crammed into every space. My pair just keep emptying the feeder all day long. The birds are very territorial and will protect a good garden and its feeders. They aren’t even very frightened of the human inhabitants. I knew someone who used to feed the nuthatches in their garden by standing still by a tree with a peanut in their mouth. The cheeky birds would take them right out of their lips. I think I’d feel a little daft doing that myself, but it’s an excellent image. Treecreepers are much better at blending in. Bark-coloured with a white belly, they dine almost exclusively on bugs. Unlike nuthatches, they never run down a tree trunk – they start at the bottom, run all the way up, then fly to the bottom of the next tree. They took the old advice not to look down from a high place
a little too seriously!