Red-breasted Nuthatch in pen and ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is acrobat, and this was a pretty quick doodle mostly just to get me sketching. I've not exactly been in the mood lately, for various reasons.

I always get a kick out of the way that nuthatches work the trees upside-down. It's like gravity doesn't work the same way for them as it does for the rest of us. There's a good reason for the strategy, though -- it lets the birds find insects that the birds who only work up might miss.

Since I didn't have a photo of a nuthatch on hand, I borrowed this one as my source.