A Brown-headed Nuthatch

Are you nutty for Nuthatches? These are endearing, tiny wild birds that mate for life and have the amusing habit of living life mostly upside down!

Nuthatches, in addition to being amusing, are very trusting of humans, and can easily be trained to be fed by hand. In addition, these wild birds provide extremely valuable natural insect control for beetles, tree borers, and caterpillars. However, as their name suggests, they also love nuts of all kinds: pine trees, spruces, firs, and hemlocks. They are very fond of beechnuts, acorns and hickories. They will flock to feeders stocked with black oil sunflower seeds, and adore suet. Nuthatches get their name because they often will take the largest nut available, wedge it in the crevice of a tree and hammer at it with their strong bills until it breaks up into bite-sized pieces. They also cache food, and sometimes hide it with bits of bark.

Nuthatches do not migrate in temperate climates, and so once they take up residence in your yard, will stay all year, amusing you with their acrobatics. They love to bathe in dripping or misting water, and will play in oscillating lawn sprinklers. They court from the tops of trees, and are monogamous once paired. Nuthatches build their nests in holes in the trunks of trees; sometimes they excavate their own holes, but other times they will reuse woodpecker or squirrel holes. Often they will line the edge of the hole with sticky resins — although nobody is quite sure why! It doesn’t bother the birds, as they can fly straight in without touching the resins. Females will lay from two to eight eggs, and it takes about three weeks after hatching before the baby Nuthatches are ready to leave the nest.

In the winter, they tend to forage with other small birds, and on cold nights may roost together: up to a hundred seventy pygmy nuthatches were counted in a single roost!

In the wild, nuthatches can live as long as ten years. So by attracting nuthatches, you will be able to control damaging tree insects for a long time. Make sure that there are either nest boxes, or some dead trees or parts of trees on your property for them to nest and shelter in, and be sure to provide nuts and suet in the winter, when insects are scarce, along with a source of fresh water. Do not use any sprays to kill insects on your trees or you may either poison the birds, or their food sources.