Nuthatches | Sittidae

Boomklevers | Trepadores

Small, compact birds with a big head, a short neck and a short, square-cut tail, and a long, straight, sharply pointed bill used like a chisel in crevices of bark. The legs are short and heavy and carry very long, strongly curved claws; with these they climb, and alone among European birds they walk head-first down a trunk as easily as up it, using the tail for no support at all. They forage on trunks and branches and, in a few species, on bare rock faces, prising insects and spiders out of cracks; in winter they turn to nuts and seeds, which they wedge into a bark crevice and hack open with the bill, and which they also store away. All species nest in a cavity, and the family trademark is that the entrance is plastered up with wet mud and clay until exactly one bird will pass; the rock nuthatches build the whole nest that way, a jug-shaped structure fixed to a rock face. The voice is loud, clear and whistled, with simple repeated notes and accelerating trills that carry far through woodland and gorge. The sexes look much alike and differ at most in the depth of the brown on flanks and vent or in the sharpness of a black cap.