Bird of the Month - January 2005
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Sitta canadensis
The tell-tale voice, strongly patterned appearance, and creeping habits of the Red-breasted Nuthatch endear this species to many. Their curiosity is well known to bird enthusiasts. As visitors to bird feeders, they bring variety to residential neighborhoods. Along the West Coast, they are often to be encountered among mixed-species foraging flocks of kinglets, chickadees, Hutton’s Vireos, Townsend’s Warblers, and other insectivorous birds. These lively creatures make a living by moving in quick hops along the trunks and limbs of trees, inspecting bark and twigs for insects and eggs and pupae.
The breeding range of these nuthatches is from southern Alaska across boreal Canada to the Maritime Provinces, extending southward in the Appalachians and in most of the western mountain ranges nearly to Mexico. Habitat preferred by Red-breasted Nuthatches for breeding is coniferous or conifer-dominated forest. Each member of a nesting pair helps excavate a nest cavity in rotting wood. Abandoned holes created by woodpeckers are also used. In such cavities are incubated 5-6 eggs. Nestlings fledge at two to three weeks of age. I once noticed an adult Red-breasted Nuthatch working silently on a cavity in a tree above my head by first observing a tiny powder-burst of coarse “sawdust” floating past through a forest sunbeam. A glance upward revealed nothing but a hole in a decayed maple bough, but then a moment later a striped head masking a lively black eye jutted boldly from the entrance. The bird opened its mandibles, another puff of delicate shavings dispersed into the still air, and then it turned about and headed back inside, to further expand its frontier of coziness.
Strongly migratory, Red-breasted Nuthatches appear in fall and winter in southerly regions of the continent, where they may be unknown during the warmer months.
This is particularly true in years when food supplies in the north fall short, sending large numbers of the birds to the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and innumerable points in between. Sunflower seed attracts them to backyards, especially where a stand of conifers or scrap of woodlot adjoins.
Breeding Bird Atlas fieldwork in Humboldt County from 1995 through 1999 revealed the presence of these birds in nearly six out of ten survey blocks. They were confirmed breeding in 7% of all blocks and were judged a probable, unconfirmed breeder in 13%. Red-breasted Nuthatches were distributed nearly throughout the county, but with more detections and proportionally many more confirmed and probable nesting reports, coming from Humboldt’s northern and northeastern portions.
Smaller size, dark blue-gray upperparts, a black facial stripe, and reddish-washed underparts serve to distinguish these nuthatches from the White-breasted Nuthatch. Nasal tooting calls in either slow or rapid series generally betray their presence before they are seen. Red-breasted Nuthatches are among the promptest responders to Northern Pygmy-Owl imitations made by birders in attempts to attract flocks of small birds.