If I had a mind to conduct a survey amongst those who leisure-walk the Forest about the commonest bird species, I suspect the nuthatch would barely feature.
Unlike the robin, great and blue tits, or even the buzzard, it is rather good at being out of sight, often tucked away on the far side of a trunk, very difficult to photograph. But learn its urgent, unmelodic call and it soon earns a place in your top five.
Dweep, dweep.
It is so named for a neat trick. A nut or seed is jammed into a bark crevice and hacked open with the beak. And that is not its only party piece. It is just as happy working a tree upside down, a behaviour that never quite stops looking improbable.
Known locally as the sitelle torchepot or the boomklever, the nuthatch is, should you catch sight of it, a striking bird. Compact and stocky, with a blue-grey coat, warm buff underpants, and a bold black stand-and-deliver eye-stripe that gives it a permanently purposeful look.
It favours the older trees of the Forest, nesting in natural holes. It is not averse to a little bricolage either, carefully reducing an entrance to size with a neat plastering of mud.
Here's a short