Shemgang, Bhutan
April 2008

The Beautiful Nuthatch is distributed sporadically and rarely in the eastern Himalayas, Myanmar, Thailand and Indochina. It is found in dense, broad-leaved forest usually with epiphytes on the trees. It is classified asVulnerable by BirdLife International.

It lives up to its English name and is very attractively marked with blue and white streaks on the black upperparts and rufous-orange underparts. It is one of the largest nuthatches.

It took us many hours on two separate days before we saw this individual but it was worth it even though the photos are a bit distant,

There are recordings onxeno-canto and additional information is available on Avibase.

For details about distribution and ecology see here.