The brown-headed nuthatch is, I think, my favorite visitor at the feeder. He’s fairly small and timid, and his head is large in proportion to his body, which = cute. Something about the position of the stripes and the shape of the head always puts me in mind of a teeny little tree-creeping badger, although he lacks the truculence that one would expect from even a miniature badgerling (which one would expect could give your pinkie finger a savage thrashing if you angered it.) And I see him only rarely, when he gets up his nerve, and he’s easily chased off by the larger white-breasted nuthatches, who are bastards, and the bluebirds, who are bastards, and the red-bellied woodpecker, who actually seems pretty mellow, but is also about five times the size of the nuthatch, and so makes him nervous.

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