[obol] Comments on White-breasted Nuthatch habitat

[Alt8bird at aol.com]

I have enjoyed reading the comments about the west-side White-breasted 
Nuthatch (i.e., Slender-billed) and its habitat use.  As this is a bird of 
particular conservation interest to me I wanted to add a couple points about its 
habitat use.

As has been noted by others they certainly can be found breeding in some ash 
and cottonwood along the Columbia River and Dennis Vroman notes their 
occurence in some different habitats in southwest Oregon.  While interesting, from a 
conservation standpoint those occurrences are pretty incidental and probably of 
little consequence.  For example, although they occur in some stands of ash 
and cottonwood, they do not occur in the vast majority of ash and cottonwood 
stands.  Although perhaps not obligate, this subspecies is at least 
near-obligate to oak habitats and its status (of pretty high concern) is directly linked 
to oak habitats.  Unfortunately, we have been losing the extent of oak habitats 
over the years, which certainly has affected populations of white-breasted 
nuthatch; but perhaps even more significanlty, it also now is absent from some 
oak stands where it used to occur.  We could speculate on the reasons for that, 
but suffice to say, this is a species (subspecies actually) that is highly 
representative of a habitat type and both the species and the habitat warrant 
our attention.    Bob Altman
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