Bird Profile
White-breasted Nuthatch
The bird that walks headfirst down a tree trunk. It takes one large seed at a time, jams it into bark and hammers it apart, which is where the name comes from.
The short answer
- Blue-gray above, white face and breast, black or gray cap, rusty patch under the tail, a long straight bill and almost no tail. The only common backyard bird that climbs down a trunk headfirst.
- Pairs hold a territory year-round and do not migrate, so the two birds at your feeder in January are the same two that nested nearby in May.
- Suet and peanuts pull them in faster than anything else, with black oil sunflower a close third.
- They wedge a seed into bark and hammer it open, and they hide hundreds more under bark flakes, often covering each one with lichen or a chip of bark.
- They nest in existing cavities and cannot make their own, so mature trees and standing dead wood decide whether a pair can breed in your neighborhood.
At a glance
- Scientific name
- Sitta carolinensis
- Length
- 5.1 to 5.5 in (13 to 14 cm)
- Wingspan
- 7.9 to 10.6 in (20 to 27 cm)
- Weight
- 0.6 to 1.1 oz (18 to 30 g)
- Range
- Southern Canada through most of the lower 48 into Mexico, wherever mature trees grow. Year-round resident, non-migratory.
- Favorite foods
- Black oil sunflower, peanuts, suet, sunflower hearts
- Best feeder
- Suet cage, peanut feeder, tube or hopper with sunflower
- At feeders
- Year-round, short visits, one item carried off each time
The White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) is a compact, blue-gray and white bird about 5.25 inches (13 cm) long with a black or gray cap, a long straight bill and a tail so short it looks unfinished. You will usually identify it by behavior before color: it is the bird moving headfirst down the trunk of your oak in short jerky steps.
It is a year-round resident everywhere it occurs. Pairs hold the same territory for years, so a yard with mature trees tends to have exactly two of them, all the time, rather than a flock.
This profile covers how to tell it from the Red-breasted Nuthatch and from the birds that share its trunk, what it eats, the feeder setup that brings it in, the wedging and caching habits that gave the family its name, and why big old trees matter more to nuthatches than to almost any other feeder bird.
How to identify a White-breasted Nuthatch#
Look at the shape first. Nuthatches have a large head, no visible neck, a stubby squared-off tail and a long, straight, slightly upturned bill, giving them a front-heavy, wedge-shaped look unlike anything else at a feeder.
The pattern is clean: soft blue-gray back and wings, an unmarked white face and throat, white underparts, and a chestnut or rusty wash under the base of the tail that you see when the bird climbs away from you. The cap and nape are glossy black on males and slate gray on females, a difference visible in good light.
The voice carries. The common call is a low, nasal, insistent yank yank yank, repeated in short series, and it is often the first sign a nuthatch is in the yard. The spring song is a faster run of flatter nasal notes.
The clinching mark is locomotion. Nuthatches walk down trunks and along the undersides of branches headfirst, without using the tail for support. Woodpeckers work upward and brace on stiff tail feathers. Brown Creepers spiral upward on brown, streaked backs with a thin curved bill.
White-breasted or Red-breasted#
Both nuthatches turn up at feeders and overlap widely in winter, but they are easy to separate once you look at the face.
| Mark | White-breasted Nuthatch | Red-breasted Nuthatch |
|---|---|---|
| Size | About 5.25 in (13 cm), noticeably chunky | About 4.5 in (11 cm), small and quick |
| Face | Plain white, no eye stripe | Black line through the eye, white stripe above it |
| Underparts | White, rusty only under the tail | Washed rusty orange throughout |
| Habitat | Deciduous and mixed woods, wooded suburbs | Conifers first, spruce, fir and pine |
| Voice | Low, nasal yank yank | Higher, tinny, like a toy horn |
| Movements | Resident, same territory year-round | Irruptive, moves far south in some winters |
Chickadees also have black caps, but they carry a black bib, a short conical bill and a long tail, and they work twig tips rather than trunks. Where both nuthatches occur, size and the face pattern settle it at a glance; details of the smaller species are in the red-breasted nuthatch profile.
Where and when you will see one#
White-breasted Nuthatches want mature trees with rough bark and standing dead wood, which in practice means old deciduous or mixed woodland, oak and hickory forest, river bottoms, wooded parks and older suburbs. They are scarce or absent in treeless country, which is why they thin out across the Great Plains and much of southern Florida and south Texas.
They do not migrate, and they do not flock with their own kind. A mated pair defends 10 to 40 acres year-round, and outside the breeding season they attach themselves to roving mixed flocks of chickadees, titmice, downy woodpeckers and kinglets, feeding along with the flock as it passes through.
Feeder visits happen in every month and are typically brief: the bird drops in, takes one item, and is gone within seconds. Activity picks up sharply in fall when caching begins, which is one reason feeders seem busier in October than the bird count suggests, a pattern discussed in fall bird feeding.
Two birds, not twenty
If you have nuthatches, you almost certainly have a pair, and the same pair for years. Judge your setup by how often they come, not by how many birds arrive at once. A single resident pair can still make dozens of feeder trips a day in cold weather.
What White-breasted Nuthatches eat#
Through spring and summer the diet is dominated by insects and spiders taken from bark: beetles and their larvae, caterpillars, ants, true bugs, scale insects and insect eggs. In fall and winter, tree seeds take over, especially acorns, hickory nuts and beechnuts, which the bird opens by wedging and hammering.
At feeders they are consistent and predictable customers:
- Suet, the fastest way to get one in view and hold it there.
- Shelled peanuts, taken whenever available, often preferred over sunflower.
- Black oil sunflower, reliably taken, one seed per trip.
- Sunflower hearts, taken freely, and cached at a higher rate because no shelling is needed.
Nuthatches pick over the seed before choosing. A bird will handle several sunflower seeds and drop them before flying off with one, which is not fussiness so much as weighing: heavier seeds carry more kernel.
The feeder setup that works#
Three feeders cover the species completely, and one of them is optional.
A suet feeder is the anchor. Mount it on a tree trunk or hang it from a pole so the bird can approach the way it approaches bark, from above. Cages with a tail prop are aimed at woodpeckers but suit nuthatches fine; upside-down suet feeders also work, since a nuthatch is entirely comfortable feeding inverted.
A peanut feeder with whole shelled kernels is the second. Nuthatches will spend real time on a mesh peanut tube, and larger pieces are more efficient for them to carry.
A tube feeder of black oil sunflower does the rest. Perch length is irrelevant here; nuthatches cling to the port itself as often as they perch.
Put suet on the trunk, not in the open
A suet cage screwed to a tree trunk at about 6 feet (1.8 m) fits the nuthatch's normal foraging route, and it is far more likely to be found in the first week than the same suet hanging in mid-air. If European starlings take over, switch to an upside-down suet feeder, which nuthatches use without hesitation and starlings mostly cannot.
Wedging, hatching and hoarding#
The family name comes from the habit. A nuthatch carries a seed or nut to a trunk, jams it into a crevice in the bark, and hacks it apart with blows of the bill, a technique historically called nut-hatching. Watch the bird after it leaves your feeder and you will see the whole sequence in about fifteen seconds.
Caching uses the same infrastructure. Through fall the pair stores hundreds of seeds and insect fragments across their territory, one item per site, tucked under bark flakes, behind lichen and in furrows. Many caches are then capped with a chip of bark, a scrap of moss or lichen, or a lump of snow, which hides the food from jays and squirrels.
Nuthatches also forage in a way that complements the rest of the winter flock rather than competing with it. Working downward and upside down, they reach the undersides of limbs and the sheltered lips of crevices that upward-climbing woodpeckers and creepers pass over.
Nesting and the bill-sweeping habit#
White-breasted Nuthatches nest in existing cavities: natural holes in large limbs, knotholes, old woodpecker nests and, less often, nest boxes. They do not excavate their own, though they will tidy and enlarge a soft-edged hole. This dependence on old trees and snags and dead wood is the single largest constraint on where they can breed.
The nest is a foundation of bark shreds, twigs and soil, lined with fur, hair and fine grass. Clutches usually run 5 to 9 eggs, incubation takes about two weeks, and young leave the nest roughly 18 to 26 days after hatching. One brood a year is the norm.
Around the entrance, adults perform a curious behavior called bill sweeping: the bird holds a crushed insect, often a foul-tasting beetle, and sweeps it back and forth over the bark surrounding the hole. The favored explanation is that the smell discourages squirrels from investigating, though it has been hard to demonstrate outright.
To offer a box, use a 1 1/4 inch (3.2 cm) hole, add an inch of wood shavings, and mount it 12 to 20 feet (3.5 to 6 m) up on a mature tree at a woodland edge. Uptake is lower than for chickadees; sizing and siting for all species is in nest boxes.
Do not clear every dead limb
A neat yard with no standing dead wood can support nuthatches at a feeder in winter and still give them nowhere to nest in spring. Where a dead limb or snag can be left safely, leave it. It is worth more to this species than any feeder you can buy.
Population and outlook#
The White-breasted Nuthatch is common and its numbers have been broadly stable or slowly rising for decades, helped by maturing eastern forests and by widespread bird feeding. It is not a species of conservation concern.
Regional populations differ more than the plain plumage suggests. Eastern, Interior West and Pacific birds have distinct calls and subtle plumage differences, and ornithologists have long debated whether more than one species is involved. If you move across the country, expect the yank call to sound noticeably different.
The real local risk is habitat simplification: removing old trees, snags and dead limbs from suburbs takes away the nest sites, and no amount of suet substitutes for a cavity.
A setup that keeps a pair around#
- A suet cage on a tree trunk at about 6 feet (1.8 m), stocked from October through April.
- Whole shelled peanuts in a mesh feeder, the fastest food to get their attention.
- Black oil sunflower in any feeder they can cling to.
- Mature trees with rough bark, plus any dead limb you can safely leave standing.
- A 1 1/4 inch (3.2 cm) nest box 12 to 20 feet (3.5 to 6 m) up, as a long shot worth taking.
Once a pair settles, they are among the most dependable birds in the yard, present every month for years. More detail in how to attract nuthatches.
Frequently asked questions#
Why do nuthatches walk down trees headfirst?
Going down headfirst gives them a view into bark crevices from an angle that woodpeckers and creepers, which always work upward, never get. That lets nuthatches find insects and eggs the upward-climbing birds have missed. They manage it with one strong, long-clawed hind toe on each foot and, unlike woodpeckers, they do not prop themselves on the tail.
What do White-breasted Nuthatches eat at feeders?
Suet, shelled peanuts and black oil sunflower, roughly in that order of enthusiasm. They pick out the largest, heaviest seed available and carry it to a tree trunk to open it. Away from feeders they eat insects, spiders and their eggs from bark all year, plus acorns, beechnuts and other tree seeds in fall and winter.
What is the difference between a White-breasted and a Red-breasted Nuthatch?
The White-breasted is bigger, about 5.25 inches (13 cm), with a plain white face and a clean white breast. The Red-breasted is about 4.5 inches (11 cm), has a black line through the eye with a white stripe above it, and rusty orange underparts. The White-breasted favors deciduous trees and stays put year-round; the Red-breasted favors conifers and can appear far south of its range in irruption winters.
Will nuthatches use a nest box?
They will, but less readily than chickadees or titmice, because they prefer natural cavities in large live or dead trees. If you try, use a 1 1/4 inch (3.2 cm) entrance hole, put an inch of wood shavings in the bottom, and mount it 12 to 20 feet (3.5 to 6 m) up on a mature tree in or at the edge of woodland.
Do nuthatches store food?
Yes, heavily, especially in fall. A nuthatch wedges seeds and insect pieces into bark furrows, under loose flakes and behind lichen, usually one item per site, and often caps the cache with a bit of bark, moss or snow to hide it. Both members of a pair cache across their shared territory and return to the stores through winter.