Winter companions

January 5. 


As I go over the causeway, near the railroad bridge, I hear a fine busy twitter, and, looking up, see a nuthatch hopping along and about a swamp white oak branch, inspecting every side of it, as readily hanging head-downwards as standing upright, and then it utters a distinct gnah, as if to attract a companion. Indeed, that other, finer twitter seemed designed to keep some companion in tow, or else it was like a very busy man talking to himself. 

The companion was a single chickadee, which lisped six or eight feet off. There were, perhaps, no other birds than these two within a quarter of a mile. And when the nuthatch flitted to another tree two rods off, the chickadee unfailingly followed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 5, 1859

It utters a distinct gnah, as if to attract a companion.  The chickadee unfailingly followed. See December 31, 1853 ("Heard and saw together white-bellied nuthatches and chickadees, the former uttering a faint quank quank and making a loud tapping, and the latter its usual lisping note."); March 5, 1859 ("I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. There was a chickadee close by, to which it may have been addressed. It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; . . . It paused in its progress about the trunk or branch and uttered this lively but peculiarly inarticulate song, an awkward attempt to warble almost in the face of the chickadee, as if it were one of its kind."). See also October 20, 1856 (“and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note, and the nuthatch is heard again, and the small woodpecker seen amid the bare twigs.”); December 5, 1856 (“As I walk along the side of the Hill, a pair of nuthatches flit by toward a walnut... I hear one's faint tut tut or gnah gnah— no doubt heard a good way by its mate now flown into the next tree ”); February 14, 1854 ("A little family of titmice gathered about me, searching for their food both on the ground and on the trees, with great industry and intentness, and now and then pursuing each other. There were two nuthatches at least, talking to each other. . . .A downy woodpecker also . . . kept up an incessant loud tapping on another pitch pine. All at once an active little brown creeper makes its appearance, . . .These birds are all feeding and flitting along together,");  February 24, 1854 (“Now and then one utters a loud distinct gnah. This bird more than any I know loves to stand with its head downward. Meanwhile chickadees, with their silver tinkling, are flitting high above.”). And see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Nuthatch; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter