BIRDS GOTTA FLY?

"Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…"

I hate to say it, but Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein got it wrong in the latter part of their lyric for the Show Boat tune, "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man." Of course, they probably weren't all that familiar with nuthatches.

If you're a nuthatch, flying is optional…as is gravity. 

Should a nuthatch wish to get from one portion of a forked tree trunk to another, it could hippity-hop down one and ratchety-climb back up the other. Or it could just keep its wings tucked, fling itself in the intended general direction, and trust the rest to luck and levitation. 

Nope…birds don't always gotta fly! Not if you're a nuthatch!   

  

NUTHATCH DISTRACTON

I'm sitting here at my desk, responsibly trying to work on a column which I must get off today…only to be repeatedly distracted by a certain nuthatch who insists on regularly ratcheting down the trunk of the big box elder and giving me a quizzical, bright-eyed stare before flying off to snatch a sunflower seed from the feeder.

What's the deal? The feeder is in the other direction. An efficient nuthatch should be creeping down the far side of the tree—checking out that flightpath. Nope. Herky-jerky down. Stop. Stare…and stare…and stare some more. Then off and around the tree. A few minutes later, the scenario repeats. Maybe fifty times so far. 

So I stare back and wonder.…    

I sit at this windowside desk most days—and no doubt look pretty much the same from the other side of the glass: a sturdy fellow wearing a shirt—camo today—hunched over a keyboard. Neither so ugly nor handsome that he needs repeatedly checking out. Why the long, thoughtful looks?      

If I were annoyed or unnerved, I could close the blind—or simply keep my head down and ignore the bird. Unfortunately, so far as my work is concerned, I'm rather amused. Distractedly, delightfully, amused. I've never been this window-peeped by a nuthatch.