Red-breasted Nuthatch

Red-breasted Nuthatches are the trouble-makers of your backyard bird community. The nuthatches in our back yard, at least, are out of control. They’re Chatty Cathys, and their annoying “een – een – een – een” can be heard all day long. To prepare for the coming winter, they select the best-quality sunflower seeds from our feeder and hide them in various secret locations around the yard (including in the roof, in the vegetable garden where the seeds have germinated, and in the nooks of the bark in the surrounding trees.) In order to select the best seeds they have to get rid of the ones that aren’t up to snuff, which means that for every seed they take they spit out four onto the lawn. They’ve been making such a mess that we’ve installed a net underneath the feeder to catch their rejects.

The chickadees often eat the rejects right out of the net.

During the breeding season, Red-breasted Nuthatches smear the entrances to their nests with sticky conifer sap, applied with either their beaks or bits of bark used as paintbrushes. In order to avoid the sticky mess themselves, they will dive right through the entrance without touching it. This is likely a strategy to discourage competitors for nesting holes and nest predators.

Ultimately, the nuthatch decided that this tree wasn’t a good enough hiding spot, so he took the seed away somewhere else. I might pretend to have disdain for this species, but in truth I always admire animals who are an annoyance to humans.

He tried jamming the seed even deeper into the nook, but ultimately gave it up as a bad choice. Maybe he was concerned that I knew his secret and would try to steal it later on.