A pair of diminutive red-breasted nuthatches has been frequenting our bird feeders in the past several weeks. Smaller and more colorful than their cousins, the white-breasted nuthatch, our pair cut a fine figure with their gray backs and rosy breasts, and jaunty black eye-stripes running across their faces.
Red-breasted nuthatches are often heard before they’re seen. Their nasal “yank-yank” sounds much like a toy trumpet being blown high in the trees. At feeders, they are often members of a mixed flock of small birds, mingling with chickadees, downies and kinglets.
Nuthatches are cavity nesters. Red-breasteds are fussy inhabitants—they seldom move into an existing cavity or nest box, preferring to hollow out a new nest site with each breeding season. Soft, old wood is necessary for this—hence, the birds are often found in old-growth forests. As a final flair, the birds collect resin from nearby conifers, and smear it around the entrance to the cavity, presumably to discourage invaders. Alternatively, they may use pieces of bark to carry the resin, and act as an applicator—a fine example of tool making, by a very small bird!
The female then builds a cup nest of grasses, lines it with softer hairs, and lays from five to six white eggs speckled with reddish-brown. These north-breeding birds produce one clutch a year.
Red-breasted Nuthatches are an irruptive species, like Great Gray and Boreal Owls. That is, they desert their winter hangouts in years of poor seed crops, particularly conifer seeds like spruce or fir. When their food supply is meager, they appear in great numbers farther south. It is possible our pair, which seem to have appeared for the last several years (it’s hard to tell without banding individuals) may have come from a distance, but it is also possible that they stay in the area but nest elsewhere, since we have only a few conifers in our yard. Chisago County is on the southern edge of their summer range.
Nuthatches have a habit of taking seeds, like black oil sunflowers, from the feeder and wedging them in crevices in tree bark (our nuthatches really like our front porch rails for this). The seeds secured, they then hammer them with their beaks to crack open a hard shell. This penchant is what gives the birds their name: “nut hack”—hacking into nuts by hammering.
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