Red-breasted Nuthatch

A favorite backyard bird is a small (4-1/2") bird with a distinctive shape -- compact and tapered at both ends!

The bill of a Red-breasted Nuthatch is narrow and sharp while its wings are fairly long and pointed.  A nuthatch’s tail is short but broad, with short legs and long toes with sharp, strongly decurved claws.  Blue-gray above, the male has the characteristic red breast, while the female is more muted underneath.

The Red-breasted Nuthatches’s name is the first clue to its distinctive feeding style, referring to its practice of securing a nut, or seed,  in a niche and hammering it open with its bill.  Nuthatches like conifer and other seeds and enthusiastically feed on black-oil sunflower seeds at backyard feeding stations.  They readily take to suet and peanuts as well!

Nuthatches are food-storing birds.  Watch for a nuthatch carrying off pieces of suet:  it may be hiding the suet in bark crevices.  After hiding the food, some nuthatches will cover the stash with bark or lichen.

Nuthatches engage in “courtship feeding.”  A female nuthatch during breeding season may not adequately feed herself prior to egg-laying, possibly because she is too heavy with eggs to hunt effectively.  Her nutrition needs increase during this time period, however.  Courtship feeding, the act of a male feeding a female, increases the odds of successful reproduction.

In the fall, look for nuthatches in mixed flocks of finches, chickadees and woodpeckers.  Bird feeders offering black oil sunflower seeds, and suet feeders, are popular with the onset of colder weather.  With shorter days and colder nights, birds spend virtually the entire daylight period searching for food.