Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

Although I’ve enjoyed watching birds since I was quite young, I only started “listing” a few years ago. I’d seen pygmy nuthatches before that listing phase began, but not since, so, this past fall, I was pleased to encounter a group of the birds foraging in a stand of Monterey cypress at San Francisco’s Fort Baker. Chatty and very busy, they moved all over the cypress trunks and flitted to and from nearby perches.

Seeing a group of pygmy nuthatches together is typical. They’re cavity roosters who often bunk up to maintain warmth, and some papers report large collectives roosting together with more than 150 birds in a single tree! Because they prefer long-needled pine forests, much of their range is in mountainous areas that get very cold during the winter. Pygmy nuthatches do not migrate, so an especially cold winter will put to the test even the largest communal roost. As a result, these remarkable little birds engage in controlled hypothermia, lowering their body temperature and reducing their metabolic rate while they are sleeping.

Something about the bird’s subdued palette just screams montane conifer forest – at least to me – and this may be because of the pygmy nuthatch; I so closely associate the bird species with the habitat type, that I’ve correlated the two, palette and habitat. Our minds are odd machines.

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.