First thought: Take its picture. Second thought: Was it stuck? After I went outside to check (camera in hand), I took a few zoom shots, during which the little bird remained still. So I talked to it, and asked if it needed help to get free — and it flicked its head sideways, released its grip on the suet holder and flew into the lilac bushes.
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| Natural inversion: upside-down Red-breasted Nuthatch watches the humans. © SB |
I wonder if it could be tamed? I know a place in Saskatchewan where Red-breasted nuthatches are hand-fed... (Just hold out your palm with peanuts and they'll land.)
(And a confession — when I posted a version of this image on Facebook, I rotated the nuthatch 90 degrees, which makes a more conventionally attractive picture. It's difficult to look at this bird in its actual photographed position, with sharp detail at the bottom, depth-of-field blur at the top. Our left-right, top-bottom eyes aren't used to seeing nature invert our perceptions. Which makes it all the more interesting...)
What is this? Red-breasted Nuthatch
Location: Backyard, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Photo date: March 27, 2013.
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Love this... and our nuthatches. One of our favourite visitors. :)
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