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They aren’t showy or “colorful” like bluejays or pine grosbeaks, but our comical white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches are a lot of fun to watch as they search trees for food or swoop in to take a sunflowers seed from a feeder.

It is easy to spot these small songbirds. Both species have black caps and white faces, as well as blue-gray backs and wings. White-breasted nuthatches are larger (5.75 inches long) and have white breasts while red-breasted (4.5 inches long) and have a rusty red breast.

But what is most obvious about these birds is how they look at the world. When a nuthatch lands on a tree trunk, it often stands there head down, looking like an upside down bird. Nuthatches are one of the few species that can walk headfirst down a tree. Not only do they climb headfirst down trees, they also sleep head down. Nuthatches often travel in forage flocks with chickadees and woodpeckers during the winter, but since they can climb down trees headfirst, they can usually spot seeds and tasty bugs that the other birds can’t. This can be a big advantage when searching for scarce winter food.

The nuthatch’s family name “Sittidae” comes from the Greek term for “climbing bird.” The common name “nuthatch” comes from Anglo-Saxon and Old English terms for “nut-breaker” because a nuthatch will wedge a seed (or nut) into a crevice in a tree and then hammer away at the seed with its beak.

While nuthatches are good at finding, and in some cases, storing seeds for later in tree crevices, they aren’t adept at excavating the nest holes that they like to use in trees. Luckily for nuthatches, our local downy and hairy woodpeckers make new nest holes every year. But just because a nuthatch pair takes over an abandoned woodpecker nest hole doesn’t mean that they don’t make renovations. These birds often daub mud around the entrance hole to make it smaller, and safer for the smaller birds. They also do something that seems a bit odd. Nuthatches sometimes catch blister beetles, crush them in their beaks and then scour the nest entrance with the crushed beetle. Researchers think that the smell or chemical compounds in the crushed beetles may deter rodents like squirrels who might want to raid the nuthatch nests.

While nuthatches are the “EnergizerTM bunnies” of the bird world with their constant crawling up and down trees in search of bugs and seeds and their constant storing of seeds in tree crevices, they don’t take much time for song. The nuthatch’s nasal “yank” call is a call of surprise. Soon we will hear the male’s “hey-hey-hey-hey-hey” call as they try to attract a mate and raise the next generation of birds that see the world upside down.

Source: Timberjay - www.timberjay.com