5 Tips to Attract Red-breasted Nuthatches to your Yard

Red-breasted Nuthatches are on the move this fall and it's easy to host them in your yard. 

In winter, these nuthatches eat seeds, especially seeds from conifer trees.  When those natural food sources fail or are inadequate, they migrate in search of better cone crops.  That's what is happening this year and why you might see this feisty little bird in your yard for the first time.

Here's 5 tips for hosting them in your yard:

1) Red-breasted Nuthatches love peanuts.

Offer peanuts out of the shell (unsalted of course) and you will be offering one of the Red-breasted Nuthatches' favorite feeder foods.

2) Offer Suet.

Red-breasteds will also eat suet, especially those that have peanuts in it like Bark Butter, Peanut Butter & Jelly or Naturally Nuts suet cakes.  And for suet logs, Bark Butter Plugs and PB&J plugs will satisfy their suet cravings.

3) Offer Stackables or cylinders with nuts.

Nutty for Nuts cylinders or Stackables.  Filled with nuts...'nuf said.

4) Consider hanging a mesh peanut feeder.

These mesh feeders hold peanuts out of the shell.  Nuthatches (and other birds like chickadees and titmice) will cling to the mesh while pecking at the nuts to get them the right size to pull out.  You'll get better views of this handsome bird as they spend more time at the feeder.

5) Try feeding Red-breasted Nuthatches from your hand.

Red-breasteds are extremely approachable and have been known to take food from an extended hand.  I'd use peanuts (no surprise there considering items 1-3!)
 
The good thing is that if you do these things, other birds like chickadees and titmice will also take advantage of these offerings!  Enjoy the nuthatches this year, especially if they are a new visitor in your yard!

Comments

[The Zen Birdfeeder]

Scott, Bark Butter is like peanut butter but even better because it also contains suet. Over 100 species of birds have eaten it, including an Ovenbird, juncos, and even warblers at my house!
Melissa, good luck and keep watching!

[Melissa]

Thanks for these great tips; I want to try to get the red-breasted nuthatches to visit this year, but I'm not too optimistic - I've never seen them nearby. But in an irruption year, anything is possible!

[Scott (@NESASK)]

Besides having suet and a peanut feeder, we also smear peanut butter on an elm tree in the winter. The red-breasted nuthatches and downy woodpeckers like to feed on that. Occasionally a squirrel will show up and clean it up, but we don't see many squirrels, so it doesn't happen often. We have had a raven show up and manage to perch on the side of the elm and clean up all of the peanut butter.