Dan's Feathursday Feature: Red-breasted Nuthatch

Where’s Gary Larson when you need him? I recently learned of a house-keeping habit of the Red-breasted Nuthatch that is just begging to be made into a Far Side comic. I’m not a fan of attributing human characteristics to our fellow creatures, but I make an exception for Mr. Larson. The way he uses birds and animals to poke fun at the world, especially the oddities of us human beings—it gives anthropomorphism a good name. If I could coax Gary Larson out of retirement long enough to make one more Far Side comic…

Picture a couple of White-breasted Nuthatches walking toward their car. In the background, waving from the doorway of their home is a pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches. The two departing nuthatches are struggling with some sort of gooey substance on their wings, and one says to the other: “Great party, but what’s with the sticky doorknobs? Hand me the turpentine.”

Or something like that.

Unfortunately, only ornithologists and birders would get it. Red-breasted Nuthatches build their nest in a tree cavity (usually a conifer) quite close to the ground, and then around the tiny entrance they plaster globs of sticky pine sap—inside and out. Ornithologists have studied them in enough detail to know that the female plasters the inside of the entrance, and the male always daubs the outside. It’s tempting to assume that the sticky entrance serves as a barrier to insects and other tiny pests, while also warding off potential small predators like snakes or lizards. Or maybe the pine odor masks the smell of their nest. Nobody knows for sure.

Actually, the why is less interesting to me than the how. As someone who spends much of December every year with his fingers stuck together with Christmas tree sap, I’d like to know how in the world the tiny Red-breasted Nuthatch manages to gather globs of pitch, carry them to its nest, and then plaster them to the nest entrance without gluing its beak shut. Whatever the trick is, it could be a game-changer for me.

Another trick the Red-breasted Nuthatch has up its metacarpus is the ability—even the preference—to scamper headfirst down a tree. It is one of only three birds common to the Midwest that do that (the other two are the White-breasted Nuthatch and the Black-and-white Warbler). Most birds that spend a lot of time on the sides of trees, like woodpeckers and creepers, position themselves head up, gripping the bark with their claws and using their strong tail feathers like a crutch to hitch themselves up and down the tree trunk. But to the Red-breasted Nuthatch, there doesn’t seem to be any up or down. It scampers left and right, down and around the trunk like a feathered Roomba with an overcharged battery, sweeping up every insect in its path. Over time, the Red-breasted Nuthatch dispensed with the long tail feathers—they only got in the way—and relies instead on its large, strong claws for nimble movement. If you spot a small, short-tailed, long-billed bird on the trunk of a tree, with its rear end where its head should be, there’s a good chance it’s a Red-breasted Nuthatch.

As songbirds go, they don’t get much smaller than the Red-breasted Nuthatch—scarcely four and a half inches from tip of tail to tip of beak. If you are fortunate to have one visit your feeder while its cousin the White-breasted Nuthatch is also present, the Red-breasted will stand out for its tiny stature. Watch these birds long enough and you’ll see why they were once called Nuthacks. They’ll take one sunflower seed from the feeder, carry it off to a nearby perch, lodge it in a crevice and hack at it with their beak until the seed yields its fruit. Unfortunately, the nuthatches that frequent our feeder have a favorite crevice in one of our metal downspouts. It is amazing how much noise one tiny Red-breasted Nuthatch can make with one tiny sunflower seed, and how many more colorful names than Nuthack I can come up with to call them at such times.

Gotta run. I just got another cartoon idea to shoot by Gary Larson.

Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and pictures of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.