The bowling club car park is almost deserted. Above my car, three wood pigeons peck at ash flowers that hang like clusters of tiny fists, while I watch the trees through my binoculars from the driver’s seat, hoping I’ve arrived in time to catch a “mud‑dabber” in action for the third consecutive spring.
A rapid “Hwit-hwit-hwit” call gives the nuthatch (Sitta europaea) away. But it isn’t until she lands upside down on the trunk of a nearby oak that I can admire her blue-grey back, soft cinnamon belly and black go-faster eye stripe. As with all nuthatch pairs, the female is in charge of nest-building, and she’s already started plastering the entrance to an old cavity in the trunk using pellets of mud. The wound callus around the hole is lined with what looks like cob walling, peppered with shallow depressions made by her bill.
Over the next couple of weeks, she’ll narrow the entrance so it fits her body, ensuring that competitors like starlings can’t squeeze in and take over the nest site. Female nuthatches are such industrious plasterers that even when they use nest boxes, they daub mud around the hole, cement the lid down and often fill the gap between box and tree. They’re not fussy about materials either – any claggy muck will do. While nest recording several years ago, my dad came across a box sealed shut with fresh dog excrement.
From time to time she disappears inside the cavity with a flake of bark, reappears bill-first, then shoots off like a steel-backed bullet. Later, I read that nuthatches have been known to fly as far as 800 metres for Scots pine bark, their preferred nest lining. And while this industrious bird zips between trees, puddles and the nest hole, building and plastering, her mate hangs around, watching and calling, without so much as a “Could I hold that for you, darling?”
His turn will come, though. Once she has laid between six and eight eggs, he will bring her food while she incubates them. But right now, she has more mud and bark to collect, giving me more time to watch from my front row seat.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
