Jane and I were out for a walk after work yesterday in our development
in St. Mary's county. As we turned a corner I thought I heard a familiar
tin horn sound. We paused and sure enough, there was a Red-breasted
Nuthatch singing in a treetop.

This leads to another encounter I had with RBNU just a few days ago in a
forbidden state just to the south of us. I've been out on a research
cruise and we were anchored about 50 miles out in the Atlantic northeast
of the Bay mouth. We had a couple of hitchhikers on Saturday including
RBNU, a Clay-colored Sparrow and an Acadian Flycatcher. The flycatcher
was holding its own eating moths and flies. The others weren't faring so
well. So, we gathered some flyswatters and started whacking the pesky
flies. The nuthatch would take the dead flies right from your fingers
and at one point began flying up and landing on people's heads. I felt
honored to have this feisty female nuthatch crawling on my head and
around my shoulders. The sparrow was more wary but would gladly accept a
dead fly if you tossed it a few feet away. It would scurry over and snag
the food. Both the sparrow and the nuthatch discovered the condensate
from the air conditioner so had an ample supply of fresh water.

The nuthatch flew off later in the afternoon as we approached land but
the sparrow was still on board the next morning and stayed on board the
boat until we were almost at our overnight berthing in Cape Charles.

Tyler Bell

California, MD