Perched on an elevated hillside overlooking Lake Cypress Springs, Jack Guthrie Park is one of the birdiest sites in Franklin County. It is also one of the most beautiful. Tall pines and oaks mix to form a mature canopy that is kept open and much to the liking of chickadees and warblers and a host of other interesting birds. It is a valuable regional resource that should not be overlooked; in no small part because it is the northwestern limit of a very curious little bird-the Brown-headed Nuthatch.

A bird of the southeastern United States, the Brown-headed Nuthatch was once widespread in the pine oak woodlands that lie along the coastal plain from Texas to Virginia. Centuries ago, when fire was allowed to burn unchecked through the grassy woodlands, the dense underbrush so common today in much of east Texas was kept in check. The result, according to early pioneer accounts, was a park-like environment that spread out over thousands and thousand of acres. It must have been something to see. In the decades since these fires have been suppressed, and many thousands of acres of trees cut down and replanted with even-aged stands of pine plantations, a number of birds that were once common and widespread in the southeastern United States have become quite uncommon-including the Brown-headed Nuthatch.

You could spend a life-time searching for this species in the post oak savannah north of I-30 in Franklin County and never encounter it. Yet it is a year-'round resident at Lake Cypress Springs and I have almost never failed to find it when I have visited Guthrie or Dogwood parks. The reason it is a valuable region resource is because, being a bird of the pineywoods, it has a very restricted range in Texas. When birders visit the state, it is often high on their wish list of birds to see while they are here. It is a treat for me because as a resident of the post oak savannah I never see it around my home.

Nuthatches are so called because of their habit of cracking open nuts (a trait that reminded earlier generations of nuts hatching -hence the name nuthatch). They also eat pine seeds and insects and are fond of walking up and down the trunks of trees. In our region they share the woods with another nuthatch, the White-breasted Nuthatch, a larger bird with a white breast and a steely blue back and crown. The Brown-headed Nuthatch looks similar, yet is smaller and as the name suggests, has a brown head, or crown. They nest in tree cavities either of their own making (which they often carve out of soft wood of dead tree branches), or those abandoned by woodpeckers which they have appropriated for their own use.

The fall foliage was just beginning to burst forth one afternoon recently when I paid a visit to Lake Cypress Springs in search of this special little bird. I headed first to Dogwood Park where a family of birds has recently been nesting in a partially dead tree behind the restrooms. Each time I visit I worry that the tree would be gone-but alas, it was still present. I spent about an hour searching through the park for the birds without success, but since it was early afternoon, I figured the birds were out foraging. After a break for lunch myself near the tree where I could keep an eye out for them, I headed back across the dam to try Guthrie Park.

I had much better luck there. I had only walked a short distance when I heard the distinctive soft twittering in the pines. The famous naturalist A.C. Bent described the call as a cha, cha, cha, or a ca/i, ca/i, ca/i, sometimes interspersed with a short pit, pit. Listening for their call is always the best way to see them. I found about a half dozen birds in a scraggly pine tree (which bore an uncanny resemblance to the tree in Charlie Brown's Christmas). The tree was growing between two unused campsites, and the birds would dart out from a nearby oak tree and quickly work over the pine cones in search of seeds or insects and then, once securing a tiny morsel of food, they would dart back to the safety of the oak tree.

I watched them in this manner for over half an hour. When I finally left them, they were still busy flitting back and forth. It made me wonder if the birds were storing the pine seeds somewhere for the winter. Some suggest that while these little birds do not store large amount of seed for the winter, they will horde limited quantities. Clearly we have much to learn about these birds. Just where these birds were taking these seeds (or what they were doing with them) would be a good research project for a student science project.