Red-breasted Nuthatch Sitta canadensis

All The Birds Of North America: Red-breasted Nuthatch Sitta canadensis

The Red-breasted Nuthatch makes its home in coniferous forests, where it gleans insects by moving headfirst in a spiral path down the trunk of a tree; it may thereby find food that has been overlooked by woodpeckers and other birds that forage upward on a tree trunk! In -winter, the Red-breasted Nuthatch feeds chiefly on conifer seeds; in years when seeds are scarce, large numbers of these birds head southward.

Identification Blue-gray above, rusty below, with paler throat; face and eyebrow white with bold black eye stripe; crown and nape black in male, grayish in female.

Red-breasted Nuthatch Sitta canadensis Voice A nasal, tinny yank-yank or nyak-nyak.

Red-breasted Nuthatch Sitta canadensis Habitat Coniferous forests; often ranging widely in winter to other habitats if conifer seeds are scarce.

Range Breeds from SE. Alaska to Newfoundland, south to S. California, Colorado, Michigan, and New Jersey; south in mountains to North Carolina. Winters in most of breeding range and south to Mexico and Gulf Coast.