Two Ways to Climb a Tree: Backyard Birds Revealed

[RUSSELL LAMAN VOICEOVER]

Today, we’re going to film the birds that go straight up and down tree trunks to see how they manage to defy gravity and navigate these vertical surfaces.

We’re wildlife filmmakers Tim and Russ Laman, and we usually travel the world filming. But in this series, we’re using our cameras to explore the lives of the birds that live right in our backyard in Massachusetts. Welcome to Backyard Birds Revealed.

[WOMAN ANNOUNCER IN VOICEOVER]

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[TIM LAMAN ONSCREEN AND VOICEOVER]

If you live in an area like we do here in Massachusetts, where we have trees in our backyard, you probably noticed that there are certain birds that spend a lot of time going up and down the tree trunks.

Here we have nuthatches and woodpeckers that do that. And so we decided to take our specialty cameras and get a closer look at how these birds navigate these vertical surfaces.

[RUSSELL ONSCREEN AND VOICEOVER]

One thing that we want to capture with these tree trunk birds is the perspective of the vertical surface that they’re living on. To do that, we have a long probe lens that we can mount looking straight up or straight down the tree.

[MUSIC] [RUSSELL VOICEOVER]

This allows us to really see what it looks like to be a woodpecker or a nuthatch, and allows us to get the camera lens flush against the tree surface.

The first thing that you notice while watching these tree trunk birds is their amazing ability to stick to the tree trunk.

Zooming in closely, we see that they have highly maneuverable toes with long hooked claws. These claws allow them to grab onto the nooks and crannies of the tree bark.

[MUSIC] [TIM AND RUSSELL TALKING] [TIM] Ooh, that’s a cool look. 

[RUSSELL] I think it’s going to be pretty cool. 

[TIM] Oh, look at that! Wow.

[RUSSELL VOICEOVER]

One difference between nuthatches and woodpeckers is how they move on the trunk.

And we had fun watching this in action. Nuthatches seem to run any which way. Often facing down the tree, but sometimes running sideways or straight back up. When you look at them closely, you can notice that their body is really center-weighted with a really tiny tail.

So they’re kind of like a little round ball that’s perfectly balanced and able to move in any direction on the tree trunk.

Woodpeckers, on the other hand, always face directly up the tree. As they move, they seem to hop, leaning forward and then lunging upwards, extending their feet before grabbing back on.

As soon as they latch on, they lean back, using their tail like a third leg of a tripod to brace themselves.

It turns out that their central tail feathers are actually very stiff and rigid, and gives them a sturdy base to lean on.

[TIM AND RUSSELL TALKING] [TIM] Okay, here comes the woodpecker.

[RUSSELL] It’s so funny how they hop down the tree like that.

[TIM] Yeah, it’s a great view of him backing down the tree.

[LAUGHS] [RUSSELL] It’s pretty funny.

[TIM] Oh, look at that, that’s a nice view.

[RUSSELL] That’s perfect.

[TIM] He just, like, got a little light in his eye. Oh, look at that.

[RUSSELL] Oh that’s great. 

[TIM] In focus, in focus.

[TIM ONSCREEN]

All right. And now we’re gonna attempt to deploy the monster tripod… to do a top down shot. Let’s see how high this thing will go. 

[RUSSELL VOICEOVER]

We realized that our view looking upward along the tree trunks is a lot like a woodpecker’s view. And it got us wondering what it must look like for a nuthatch. So we rigged the probe camera to look straight down the trunk. Even with the camera at only 10 feet off the ground, it was really disorienting to be looking straight down like this, but nuthatches get this view from 80 feet in the air all day long.

As we continued watching, we wondered why these birds evolved to maneuver so differently. And we learned that it had to do with their different feeding strategies.

Woodpeckers sacrifice some mobility for power, with their stable tripod base, strong legs, and hefty beak. They can drill deep into heartwood to get out big beetle grubs that lie inside. And they’re the only forest birds that can do this.

Nuthatches, on the other hand, are incredibly agile. With their ability to see every angle of the bark, including from above, they can spot food in the nooks and crannies that other birds might have missed.

They might not get as big of morsels, but they don’t miss a thing on the bark’s surface.

[TIM ONSCREEN]

I think we got something good, it worked. The birds were right under the lens here. They didn’t mind this big tripod with the cloth on it here at all.

[RUSSELL ONSCREEN]

Well, it was really interesting to get a close look at how these birds navigate the vertical world of these tree trunks. 

[TIM ONSCREEN]

Thanks for tuning in to Backyard Birds Revealed. And be sure to check out our other episodes on the Cornell Lab YouTube channel and the All About Birds website.

End of Transcript