BEDOUIN WOMAN

“There’s a Bedouin woman sitting in our garden.” I heard my husband report this to someone on our kitchen phone. He was standing at the sink peering through the window screen into the front yard.

He was peering at me. I had read that if you sit very still, some birds will actually eat seeds from the palm of your hand, and I was testing this theory by sitting in an Adirondack chair near our feeders. I had an old blanket over my head and body, and I’d been sitting dead still in my tent since 5 a.m. with just my hand sticking out of the blanket

I recall one time when I made a disparaging remark about boxers. “Why are these thugs considered athletes?” I asked my sports-minded sister. She told me to hold my hands out in front of me––just bare hands, not with heavy gloves on––and see how long I lasted. And this is what came to mind as I held out the fruit-and-nut deluxe mix for the birds. My arm was spasming.

Not to be discouraged, I moved to our swing––an old-fashioned wooden plank hanging from fat hemp ropes. This time I put the bird food on my head so I could hold onto the ropes and sit very still. I waited a good half hour. A terrific variety of birds perched nearby and held their sides, laughing.

Finally I could feel something hopping down one of the ropes toward my head. I was sure because the rope was vibrating against my palm and my husband’s eyes were getting wider. As surreptitiously as I could, I peeked up and saw a nuthatch coming my way.

A nuthatch is handsome, although I would have preferred a smaller bird, maybe a finch or titmouse. But I had waited a long time for this to happen; I wasn’t going to be fussy.

The bird ca-chunked its way down, down, down, until it reached my head. It stepped gingerly from the rope into my hair, and eight scratchy little toes began picking their way across my scalp. Each foot has one toe pointing backwards and three pointing forward so the bird can get a pretty good grip on any surface. It’s not pleasant to imagine what that bird was tracking through my hair. It’s even worse to know, so thanks a heap, Google: avian pox, trichomoniasis, aspergillosis, and salmonellosis, for starters.

The genus for nuthatches is easy to remember. It’s sitta, as in they sitta on my head. The wonderful Cornell Lab of Ornithology site says nuthatches “get their common name from their habit of jamming large nuts and acorns into tree bark, then whacking them with their sharp bill to “hatch” out the seed from the inside.” * This did not bode well for my head. When the pecking began, it was nothing like "the feathery touch of a chickadee walking on your hand" that others have described.

So what have I gained from letting a nuthatch peck nuts off my head? I’d like to report it was a wonderful opportunity to commune with nature, but it was more like a creepy opportunity to have nightmares. I used half a bottle of Prell and scrubbed my head with a nailbrush, but for weeks my scalp felt like it was crawling around under my hair.

* The Cornell Ornithology site:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/White-breasted_Nuthatch/id