White-breasted Nuthatch: the bird that comes down the tree head first

The short answer

• White-breasted Nuthatches take black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts, shelled peanuts and suet as top-tier foods, and ignore millet entirely.
• They forage head down because they see the underside of bark flakes that woodpeckers and creepers, which work upward, have already passed over.
• A nuthatch cannot open a seed in its feet. It jams the seed into a bark crevice and hammers it, which is where the name comes from, so an in-shell seed gives you the whole performance and a hulled seed does not.
• Expect one territorial pair, not a flock. A yard with two nuthatches has its full complement.
• They need mature trees with rough bark. No large trunks within sight of the feeder means no nuthatches, whatever you put in it.

Almost every bird that works a tree trunk goes up it. Woodpeckers hitch upward on stiff tails, Brown Creepers spiral up and then drop to the base of the next tree to start again. A nuthatch goes down. That one difference explains its shape, its feeding niche and most of what it does at your feeder.

The head-down habit and why it pays#

A nuthatch descending a trunk hangs from the foot placed higher up, toes hooked over the bark, and uses the lower foot as a brace. It has short legs, oversized toes and long claws to make that work, and a short square tail that is no use as a prop and is not meant to be one.

The payoff is a different angle of view. Birds moving up a trunk see the upper surfaces of bark flakes and the top lips of crevices. A nuthatch coming down looks straight into the undersides of those same flakes, at insect eggs, pupae and spiders tucked where an upward-moving bird never looks. On a tree that a Downy Woodpecker has just worked over, a nuthatch still finds food.

Watch one arrive at your feeder and you will see the habit persist even where it makes no sense: it will come down the pole head first, hang under the feeder tray upside down, and take seed from below the port rather than from the perch.

Wedge, hammer, hide: the feeder routine#

The name is a worn-down version of "nut hack", and it is literal. A nuthatch cannot hold a seed under its feet and hammer it the way a chickadee or a titmouse does. Instead it flies to a tree, jams the seed into a bark crevice or a fork so the bark holds it, then braces and strikes down at it with the whole body. On a mature oak or a shagbark hickory this takes a few seconds. On smooth-barked young trees it takes much longer, and you will see the bird lose seeds and go back for more.

That has a direct consequence for what you put in the feeder. Sunflower hearts are convenient and quick to handle, but a nuthatch just swallows or caches them. If you want to watch the wedging and hammering, offer sunflower in the shell.

Other things to expect from a nuthatch at a feeder:

• Approach. Almost always from a trunk, in a short direct swoop, rarely from open sky.
• Time on the feeder. Three to eight seconds. They do not settle and feed.
• Caching. Seeds are wedged into scattered bark crevices, often capped with a flake of bark or a scrap of lichen. Storage is spread out rather than piled in one larder.
• Dominance. A nuthatch displaces chickadees and usually gets its way with titmice. It gives ground to woodpeckers, jays and cardinals without argument.
• Flock size. One or two. This species does not flock, it pairs.
• Time of day. Spread through the day, with the strongest showing in the first two hours of light and a second run in the last hour before roosting.

Stocking for a resident pair#

Skip for this species: Millet, Nectar.

Read that row and the plan writes itself: sunflower and fat at the top, millet and nyjer at the bottom. The two containers that matter are a suet cage and any feeder holding black oil sunflower. A peanut feeder with shelled halves is the strong third, and often the one that turns an occasional visitor into a daily one.

Placement is different from most species because a nuthatch is coming from a trunk, not from a shrub. Two working rules follow from that:

1. Put at least one feeder within about 25 ft of a mature tree with rough bark. Oak, hickory, maple and cottonwood all work. A yard of young ornamentals with smooth bark supports nuthatch visits but not nuthatch feeding behavior.
2. Mount suet on or beside a trunk rather than dangling it on a long wire in the open. A cage that swings in the wind is workable for a Downy and irritating for a nuthatch.

They will also feed from a platform, which is worth knowing if you want to offer mealworms, and they will hang under a hopper roof to reach seed from the wrong side. For general distance, height and cover, see where to put a bird feeder.

Which gray and white bird is it?#

Four birds get called nuthatches by people describing them over the phone.

The Downy Woodpecker is the other regular mix-up, and the tail settles it: a Downy leans back on a stiff propped tail, a nuthatch does not touch its tail to the bark at all.

When the nuthatch stops coming#

• Nothing to wedge into. No mature rough-barked tree within sight of the feeder is the most common structural reason a yard has no nuthatches. Nothing in the feeder fixes it.
• The suet has gone. Not empty, but soft, greasy and sour. Rendered fat turns rancid above roughly 25 °C, and birds abandon it before you notice the smell. Swap to a summer-grade cake or pull it in heat, as covered in suet for birds.
• Starlings own the suet cage. A flock will strip a cake in a morning and a nuthatch will not compete. An upside-down suet feeder solves this cleanly, because a nuthatch feeds inverted without thinking about it. See starlings.
• The pair is nesting. From April to early June a pair is on a cavity and visits fall off sharply, then rebound in July with fledglings in tow.
• Something took the territory. Nuthatch pairs are long-lived and site-faithful, so a sudden permanent absence usually means the tree came down, not that the birds got fussy.

Through the year#

They do not migrate and they do not leave. Winter is when you notice them, from November to March, partly because insect prey is gone and partly because they attach themselves to the roving mixed flock of chickadees, titmice and Downies that circulates through the neighborhood several times a day. In late winter the male's nasal song becomes constant. From April the pair disappears into a cavity, and by mid-July you get short-tailed, dull-faced juveniles clinging awkwardly to the feeder and begging. Autumn is caching season, and the point at which the same two birds start emptying a sunflower feeder faster than they possibly could be eating it.

Frequently asked questions#

Why do nuthatches climb down trees head first?

It gives them a different view of the bark. Woodpeckers, creepers and most other trunk birds work upward, so they see the tops of bark flakes and the upper lips of crevices. A nuthatch coming down looks into the undersides of the same flakes and finds insects and eggs the upward-moving birds have missed. It manages the descent by hanging from one foot placed high with the toes hooked and bracing with the lower foot, and it never uses its tail as a prop the way a woodpecker does.

What do White-breasted Nuthatches eat at a feeder?

Sunflower and fat, in that order. Black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts, shelled peanuts and suet all rate top tier for this species in our dataset. Striped sunflower, safflower, in-shell peanuts and mealworms are taken readily. Millet is not eaten at all and nyjer barely registers. A tube of sunflower plus a suet cage on a tree trunk will keep a resident pair coming every day of winter.

How do I tell a White-breasted from a Red-breasted Nuthatch?

Look at the face and the underparts. A White-breasted has a clean white face with no line through the eye and white or pale gray underparts, and weighs about 21 g. A Red-breasted has a bold black line through the eye with a white stripe above it, rusty orange underparts, and weighs about 10 g, which is chickadee-sized. The calls differ too: the White-breasted gives a low nasal series, and the Red-breasted sounds like a small tin horn.

Do nuthatches store food?

Constantly. A nuthatch carries a seed away, wedges it under a bark flake or into a crevice, and often covers it with a chip of bark or lichen. Storage sites are spread out rather than concentrated, which makes them harder for other birds to raid. From September onward a good share of what leaves your feeder is going into these caches rather than into the bird, so consumption climbs in autumn without any increase in the number of birds.

Why do I only ever see one or two nuthatches?

Because that is all there are. White-breasted Nuthatches hold a territory as a mated pair all year rather than joining winter flocks the way chickadees do, and a pair will not tolerate another pair on the same ground. If two are visiting your feeder, you already have the maximum. They do travel with the roving mixed flock as it passes through their territory, which is why they often appear at the same moment as chickadees and Downy Woodpeckers.

Sources and further reading

1. White-breasted Nuthatch Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Identification, foraging behavior and range
2. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Foods and feeder types used by nuthatches
3. Guide to North American Birds National Audubon Society Habitat and year-round status