How to Attract Red-breasted Nuthatch to Your Yard

Want to bring Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis) to your yard? Here is the honest, data-backed version — the feeders and food they actually use, whether they will take a nest box, and the habitat that keeps them coming back. Every recommendation is drawn from real bird-science sources (the Cornell Lab, Audubon and their peers), not guesswork.

The best feeders for Red-breasted Nuthatch

Comes to feeders taking sunflower seeds (hulled or shelled), suet, peanuts, peanut hearts, peanut butter and mealworms. Small but aggressive, it will dominate chickadees at a feeder; uses suet cages, hopper and platform feeders.

Feeder styles that work for this bird:

• hopper feeder
• platform / tray feeder
• suet feeder
• peanut feeder
• tube feeder

What to feed Red-breasted Nuthatch

The foods this species takes most readily:

• black-oil sunflower
• sunflower hearts
• peanuts
• peanut hearts
• suet
• peanut butter
• mealworms

Will Red-breasted Nuthatch use a nest box?

Yes — Red-breasted Nuthatch is a cavity nester that will take a correctly-sized nest box. Use these NestWatch dimensions (the entrance-hole size is what keeps larger competitors out):

Give the box a rough or grooved interior below the hole so chicks can climb out, ventilation and drainage holes, and no outside perch (perches only help predators and competitors).

How to attract Red-breasted Nuthatch to your yard

A conifer specialist: nesting habitat almost always has many conifers (spruce, fir, hemlock, pine) and it eats conifer seeds in winter. Both sexes excavate their own cavity in a rotten stub or snag and it only rarely uses nest boxes, so boxes work best where dead trees are absent. Plant/keep conifers and leave dead snags; irruptive in winter, so offer sunflower, peanuts and suet.

See it near you

For the full profile — photos, sounds, range and ID — see the Red-breasted Nuthatch species page. To find where it is being reported right now, use Birds Near You.