This is bird note. The nut hatch has a compact body, longish legs, and strong claws for clamoring up and down tree trunks.

It's campers toy-like on the underside of branches making beeping sounds.

But its peak is all business.

Long, slender, sharp.

It can pluck a tiny spider from a crevice in the bark,

or carve a nest hole right through the outer hide of a tree.

As if that beak weren't enough,

the brown-headed nut hatch of southeastern pine forests is even known to use tools.

Picking up a flake of pine bark in its beak, the bird uses it as a lever to pry up the bark scales on a tree and get to the insects below.

Or it might use a twig held in its beak to reach prey. The nut hatch may carry a particularly handy tool from tree to tree and later use it to conceal its stash.

Scientists consider this tool use a rare behavior in birds.

A resourceful bird, the nut hatch.

For bird Note, I'm Mary McCann.

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