Yank, Yank
The Great Outdoors | January 1, 2018
By Jackie Scharfenberg, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Yank, Yank! Do you see another white-breasted nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) flying around here? In particular, a handsome male with a blue-gray back and wings, a black cap and neck outlining a white face with a black eye? You may have noticed his white chest and rusty lower belly/under tail. He’s small, about six inches long, with a big head, no real neck, and a strong, long gray/black bill.
No? Good! That means I can eat without him pushing me aside.
MATES
I do like him, as he’s my mate for life. He put on spectacular courtship show – head raising, tail feathers spreading, wing drooping, back and forth swaying, deep bowing, and yummy bug feeding. Afterward, I found a tree cavity, like a woodpecker hole. I lined it with fur, bark, and lumps of dirt and then built a cup of fine grass, shredded bark, feathers, and other soft materials. Next, I laid eight white eggs with reddish-brown spots, an average clutch. My mate fed me while I incubated the eggs for about 13 days. Once the young hatched, he helped me feed insects and spiders to our hungry young even two weeks after they fledged. That was a lot of work. I’m glad we only have one brood a year.
My mate and I spent quite a bit of time sweeping the outside and inside of our nest opening with crushed insects: blister beetles, fur, or vegetation held in our bills. We did this to deter pillagers, especially squirrels, from attacking our eggs and young.
OUR TERRITORY
Throughout the year, we remain in the same territory. We defend it from other nuthatches. We search out food by climbing up, sideways, and head-first down tree trunks and around large branches. In the summer, we eat almost exclusively insects and spiders. Come winter, our diet changes to include 60-70 percent large meaty seeds like acorns, hickory nuts, and sunflower seeds. We take those seeds to a tree where we jam them into the bark. We then whack them with our sharp bills to “hatch” out the scrumptious morsel inside, thus our name, nuthatch. For those lean times, we cache nuts, seeds, and insects under loose bark covering them with other pieces of bark, lichen, moss, or snow.
IN WINTER
In winter, we may join flocks led by chickadees and titmice to look for nourishment. This gives us eyes to locate tasty treats and keep watch for predators like hawks and owls.
ROOSTING
Outside the breeding season, we roost for the night in tree holes or under loose bark – usually by ourselves. When it gets super cold, we huddle up together (record is 29 of us) in a roost to keep warm. Come morning, we leave taking our feces with
us – an unusual practice for birds.
Look for us, and listen for our nasally, “yank, yank,” in deciduous forests and woodland edges throughout most of North America. Fill a birdfeeder with sunflower seeds or suet near some large trees, and we’ll be sure to come visit!
