Everybody deserves a good molt now and then.
This ratty-looking Carolina white-breasted nuthatch reminds me of my all-time favorite name for the sittids.
Jakob Theodor Klein, finding that the bird had affinities to two different groups, called it “parus facie pici,” the woodpecker-faced titmouse.
Because these little birds climb trees, they are accounted as belonging to the woodpeckers, but incorrectly, just as the creeper is incorrectly assigned to the woodpeckers. All woodpeckers have two toes pointing forward and two pointing back. Neither the nuthatch nor the creeper, both outfitted with three toes in front and one in back, is a woodpecker just because they cling to trees and branches. The nuthatch, the “blue woodpecker,” is the largest of the titmice, since its tongue is also unlike that of the woodpeckers.
Good to know.
