Habitat: Clearings and areas that have been burned (more old stumps available for nesting) in southern pine woods are preferred by brown-headed nuthatches. They can also be found in mixed pine and hardwood forests of extreme southeastern United States (Bent 1948). Nest: Brown-headed nuthatches excavate or partially excavate nest cavities 4.5 to 8 inches deep in dead trees and stumps (often fire blackened) or posts and poles. Bent (1948) gave little evidence that the brown-headed nuthatch will use old woodpecker holes, but they may enlarge and use natural cavities. The nests are located 3 to 46 feet from the ground (only rarely above 13 feet). Because nest entrances are more like a crack in a tree than rounded like a woodpecker hole, nests are difficult to find (Pearson 1936). Food: Brown-headed nuthatches are mainly insectivorous, and are considered a useful protector of trees. They search for insects and their eggs in crevices of the bark on the trunks, branches, twigs, and needles of pines. They also eat pine seeds (Bent 1948). Pygmy nuthatch _Sitta pygmaea_ L 3½″ [Illustration] Habitat: Pygmy nuthatches are common in ponderosa pine forests throughout the West. They are also found in Jeffrey pine, Bishop pine, and Monterey pine associations in California (Grinnell and Miller 1944), and in pinyon-juniper woodlands in Arizona (Phillips et al. 1964). Nest: Nearly all reported nests of the pygmy nuthatch have been from 8 to 60 feet above ground in cavities excavated by the bird itself in dead or live pine trees (Bent 1948). We found 27 nests in ponderosa pine snags and two in dead aspens in the White Mountains of Arizona. Food: About 80 percent of the diet is animal material, mostly wasps and spittle insects, including some ants, beetles, and caterpillars; the balance is nearly all conifer seeds (Bent 1948). Brown creeper _Certhia familiaris_ L 4¾″ [Illustration] Habitat: This inconspicuous small bird is fairly common in the coniferous forests of the Transition and Canadian Life Zones. In Colorado, it breeds from 7,000 feet to timberline (Bailey and Neidrach 1965). Creepers winter throughout the forests of the southern states. Nest: Sometimes creepers nest in natural cavities and old woodpecker holes, but generally they make their nests between the loose bark and the trunk of a large dead tree (Bent 1948). We found three nests behind the loosened bark of dead ponderosa pines and one in a white fir snag in the White Mountains of Arizona. Food: Few details are known, but the diet is mainly insects, including weevils, leafhoppers, flat bugs, jumping plant lice, scale insects, eggs of katydids, ants and other small hymenoptera, sawflies, moths, caterpillars, cocoons of leaf skeletonizers, pupae of the codling moth, spiders, and pseudoscorpions (Bent 1948). The small amount of vegetable material eaten is chiefly mast. House wren _Troglodytes aedon_ L 4¼″