THE WHITE‐BREASTED NUTHATCH

2 2 Y T H E W H I T E - B R E A S T E D N U T H A T C H J O H N F O Y Like a clerk in a local discount store diligently counting every cent, the bird asks for nothing more than its small due, picking what scant food it can from between the strips of hardened bark it clings upsidedown to. Pine weevils and ants make up the meal, and just outside its hole it smears blister beetles to irk the squirrel that likes to come and try to kill it. On principle it flicks feces from the nest at dawn. In the bankrupting cold of wintertime it tells me what, in fact, is mine. ...