Bird in Focus

Red-breasted Nuthatch

The Birdhouse Network's Most Wanted
Ninth in a Series

By Tina Phillips

Red-breasted Nuthatch by Larry McQueen

Cool Fact: Red-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta canadensis) use their bills or a piece of bark to apply sticky conifer resin to the entrance of the nest hole. The resin may keep out predators or competitors such as House Wrens. Red-breasted Nuthatches avoid the resin by diving directly through the hole.

Description: A small, four-inch bird with a distinctive white eyebrow and black eye stripe that help distinguish it from other North American nuthatches. Top of head is black, back is gray, and underparts are reddish.

Breeding range: Year-round residents of spruce and fir forests from the Pacific Coast of British Columbia and southeastern Alaska to the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, southward to the Southwest and eastern Appalachians. It is the only nuthatch species that regularly irrupts beyond its breeding range in winter.

Preferred habitat: Mature stands of coniferous forest with spruce, fir, pine, and hemlock.

Diet: Tree-climbing insects and spiders during the breeding season; conifer seeds and suet and seed from feeders during winter.

Conservation status: Significant increases throughout much of its breeding range; significant declines in Idaho, Oregon, and the Sierra Nevada range (see map).

Causes of decline: Degradation of breeding habitat and loss of nesting sites because of fire, logging, and removal of diseased and dead trees.

Nesting records in The Birdhouse Network database: 4

Nest-box tips: Nests in aspen, birch, oak, cottonwood, poplar, and cone-bearing trees such as spruce; occasionally in nest boxes. Place boxes 5–15 feet high, with round 1 1/4" entrance hole facing away from prevailing winds.

How can you help?
Contribute to the study and conservation of cavity-nesting birds by participating in The Birdhouse Network.

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu